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Poland in the World 
of Democracy 

By 

ANTHONY J. ZIELINSKI 



With an Introductory Letter by the 

Most Rev. J. J. Glennon 

Archbishop of St. Louis 

and 

An Introduction by 

John W. Weeks 

U. S. Senator from Massachusetts 

and 

A Foreword by 

Laura de Gozdawa Turczynowicz 

Author of **When the Prussians Came to Poland" 



"... . statesmen everywhere are agreed 
that there should be a united, independent and 
autonomous Poland." 

— Woodrow Wilson, January 22, 1917 



Copyright, 1918 
by 

AnTHONT J. ZlELINSKI 



OCT 25 1919 



CI.A535462 



y-V-\,v-. I 






"The Poles no longer have a common country, 
but they have a common language. They will 
remain, then, united by the strongest and most 
durable of all bonds. They will arrive, under 
foreign domination, to the age of manhood, and 
the moment they reach that age, will not be far 
from that in which, emancipated, they will all be 
attached once more to one center." 

Talleyrand, after the Council of Vienna, 1815. 



"Oh, my Poland, thou art on the threshold of 
thy victory. Let it be only seen that thou art 
the eternal enemy of all evil and then shall the 
bonds of death be broken. In the last moment, 
when death struggles against life, amid the sobs 
of despair, the wails of dying lips, in the strength 
of thy martyrdom overcome that moment, con- 
quer that pain, and thou shalt rise as the queen 
of all Slavonia, to dry human tears and to rule 
the world of souls." 

Sigismund Krasinski. 



TO 

MY SISTER 

ANTOINETTE. 

AUTHOR. 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER 

January 26, 1917. 
My dear Mr. Zielinski : 

The manuscript you have been kind enough to 
have me look over is well worthy of perusal. It 
shows conclusively that nations, like men, do not 
live by bread alone; and that they have a future 
as long as they have a soul. 

That Ireland and Poland have souls is abund- 
antly proved by the fact that they are alive ; and 
since they are alive and have souls, they have also 
a future — a future that we can jointly hope will 
be filled with liberty and progress and peace. 
Just today the rights of the conquered are few, 
and they are made to suffer unspeakably; yet, 
out of the war is sure to come a deeper and 
broader acceptance of the right of the individual 
nation to live and thrive, and expand within the 
sphere of their own genius; and in the assertion 
of their own rights. 

When this principle is fully established, Ire- 
land and Poland shall again take their place; 
and that an honored one among the nations of 
the earth. 

Yours very sincerely, 

John J. Glennon, 
Archbishop of St. Louis. 



INTRODUCTION BY JOHN W. WEEKS, 

UNITED STATES SENATOR 
FROM MASSACHUSETTS. 

The task of making Poland and Polish aspira- 
tions known to the American people can very 
properly be regarded as a patriotic undertaking 
at this time. The aspirations of Poland for free- 
dom are identical with the aspirations which 
stirred the American Colonists, and when we 
remember that from far-distant Poland two vali- 
ant warriors came from under the White Eagle 
to give their aid to the infant Republic, an 
obligation rests upon the Americans to respond 
to the call of Poland in this present emergency. 

The Pole in America has established a position 
for himself worthy of attention and respect. Al- 
though the great bulk of the 4,000,000 immigra- 
tion is very recent, the nation has already begun 
to contribute doctors, lawyers, professional men 
of distinction, and stalwart, vigorous fighters. In 
my own State of Massachusetts, they have won 
a high reputation because of their industry, be- 
cause of their honesty, and also because of the 
unswerving and whole-hearted loyalty with which 
they have supported American war aims. 



Introduction. 11 



The Pole in America needs no eulogy, but the 
business of making the Pole in Poland, his aspira- 
tions and achievements, and the history of his 
country known to the American people is of vital 
importance. It is inevitable when the time comes 
for peace discussion — and this situation will pre- 
vail even if we secure the unconditional surrender 
of the Germans in the field — that the Central 
Allies will devote their energies to an attempt 
to hold sway over the Mittel Europa territory 
they now control and of which Poland forms so 
vital a part. Unless the American people are 
educated in Polish affairs, there is a grave and 
serious danger that the character of the peace 
conferences may be outside their understanding, 
and that the American people as a whole will 
find themselves confused in their attempt to 
follow issues of which they have but a slight 
knowledge. 

As I understand it, it is to correct that situa- 
tion and to prepare the American people against 
this possibility that this book has been written, 
and I take pleasure in endorsing the patriotic 
spirit of the author. 

John W. Weeks. 



FOREWORD BY MADAME 
LAURA DE GOZDAWA TURCZYNOWICZ, 

Author of "When the Prussians Came to Poland." 
THE POLISH QUESTION. 

Who shall classify it — or express the tremen- 
dous importance to humanity of the just — and 
righteous settlement of the future status of that 
martyred land, Poland? 

There is one side of the Polish question which 
has been industriously exploited by the Germans 
— the lack of unity of purpose among the Polish 
people. True — but stop just one moment to con- 
sider that for one hundred and fifty years, three 
governments, Russia, Austria and Germany, have 
done their utmost to separate and bring about 
misunderstanding among the Poles — forcing them 
to speak a language not their own, flogging even 
little children in Prussian Poland for saying 
their prayers in their mother's tongue, separating 
them by boundary lines and regulations difficult 
to bear, forcing the men of one family to serve in 
three different armies, if the estates of a family 
were in different parts of what was all only 
Poland. 



Foreword. 13 



When once this fact reaches the mind of any 
thinking man or woman, that man or woman 
MUST admire that Polish people and their hearts 
of gold, which held always the love of Poland, 
and prayed for her freedom. 

Upon on^ question every Pole agrees — there is 
no dissenting voice — the Freedom of Poland, and 
her right to stand among the nations. 

Poland has been so carefully misrepresented 
among the nations, that it is difficult to get the 
case of Poland fairly tried. Those not under- 
standing, are apt to think in extremes, either 
that Poland was a land of romance, where every- 
body played the piano marvelously, or sang — or 
else dug in coal mines, if they did not belong to 
those who could claim wonderful titles and lived 
in the strange old palaces of Poland. 

Few people understand that these people, who 
have made such heroic struggles, just for the 
right to speak their own language, are even as 
other people, with the same capacity to suffer, 
and with how much greater capacity to be happy ! 
In those days before the war, how they under- 
stood to lay their burdens down, the burdens 



14 Foreword. 



which were even then intolerable, ta teget them- 
selves in dancing the peautiful and poetic dances 
of Poland. Truly a gallant people, greatly mis- 
understood of the world. 

To America, the free, the great Democracy — 
Poland, the Democracy of Ages past, is looking 
for a helping hand. A helping hand reached out 
as to a brother — to help her to her feet — to hold 
her erect — when she is on her feet. 

Every Polish heart would give its last drop 
of blood for the man who is the first real friend 
they have found — who has spoken for them, advo- 
cating Freedom for Poland — President Woodrow 
Wilson. The very mention of his name gives a 
Polish audience a thrill, as no other name does — 
for he said Poland should be "free and united.'' 

Polish people have had many promises made 
them, but all because someone wished to make 
use of them, and, therefore, promises without 
value. President Wilson gave his message to the 
world only because it was just and proper. 

So we, who love Poland, look forward to a 
free. United Poland, with the right to the pursuit 
of happiness, and to worship God in their own 
way. 



Foreword. 15 



Then shall the Polish History be written anew, 
and truly — her art and literature given to the 
world. 

To America shall then come the thanks of that 
freed people, for all she had done. For the 
American Eed Cross, which has built up the 
devastated land, and been a mother to her people. 

It will all come about some day, and we shall 
look back to the suffering, calm in the existing 
FREEDOM and PEACE, with thankful hearts 
that the Heavenly Father has remembered His 
Polish children. 

Polish Politics — alas ! they exist. We pray the 
self-seekers guiding them shall also be swept 
away in the flood of Sunny Freedom, for the real 
politics of Poland is only Democracy, with all 
the deepest meaning of the word. No Kings! 
No aristocracy — ^just people — and a Government 
of the people — by the people ! 



Laura de Gozdawa Turczynowicz. 



NOTE. 

With the exception of four, these chapters were 
serially published in the Free Poland. Some are 
here reprinted in the same form and under the 
same titles as published in that periodical ; others 
were given a different title and lost much of their 
original form in the process of revision and 
reconstruction. 

They were, of course, originally written as 

contributions to the Free Poland, and it was only 

after they had received a favorable comment from 

the Polish press and been freely reprinted in 

several representative papers and periodicals, and 

after it had been urged that their publication in 

book form would render a definite service to the 

Polish Cause, that the writer consented to gather 

them in this book. 

A. J. Z. 
St. Louis, Mo., 1918. 



CONTENTS. 

Introductory Chapter. 

Chapter II — Poland's Historical Right (Ex- 
ternal ) . 

Chapter III — Poland's Historical Right (In- 
ternal ) . 

Chapter lY — Poland's Intellectual Right (An- 
cient). 

Chapter Y — Poland's Intellectual Right ( Mod- 
ern ) . 

Chapter YI — Poland's Political Right. 

Chapter YII— Poland Makes World Safe for 

Democracy. 
Chapter YIII — Causes of Poland's Downfall. 
Chapter IX — The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 
Chapter X — The "Liberum Yeto." ^ 

Chapter XI — Reformatory Measures and Eco- 
nomic Progress. 
Chapter XII — American Civil War in Poland. 

Chapter XIII — The Constitution of the Third of 

May, 1791. 

Chapter XIY — Results of the Partitions. 
Chapter XY— The Ethical Moral Right. 
Chapter XYI — President Wilson, a Champion of 

the Polish Cause. 
Chapter XYII—The Twin Nations. 



Introductory Chapter. 

THE POLISH QUESTION AND THE FUTURE 

WORLD PEACE. 

^^An independent Polish state should he erected 
which should include the territories inhabited by 
indisputably Polish populations ^ which should be 
assured a free and secure access to sea, and whose 
political and economic independence and terri- 
torial integrity should be guaranteed by inter- 
national covenant/^ 

— President Wilson to the Senate, January 8, 
1918. 

With Russia apparently disintegrating politi- 
cally, with Prussianized Germany pressing her 
policy in the East and with America in the war 
to suppress Prussian autocracy and to bring 
liberty to the smaller nations, Poland's recon- 
struction took the first rank in the war issue. 
Since the time hostilities were struck, the Polish 
Question discarded its swaddling clothes of an 
"internal question," and changed its less preten- 
tious name of a European problem to that of a 
world problem of such vital importance, that in 
self-respect and for its own salvation, the world 



20 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

of Democracy must restore Poland her birthright 
to freedom and independence. 

The fundamental root of the Polish question 
lies deep in the Polish history. Five centuries 
ago, Poland had already been an ancient kingdom. 
From the reign of Casimir the Great, 1333, to the 
tinie of Sobieski, 1674-96, Poland was the great- 
est state in Europe. In the fifteenth, sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, the Poles were one of 
the most cultured nations on the continent. 

The territory of Poland reached, at its fullest 
expansion, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, 
North and South, and from the Oder to the Bug, 
West and East. This territorial expansion was 
rendered possible by Lithuania uniting to Poland 
in 1386, and by Ruthenia seeking and actually 
succeeding in uniting herself to Poland not long 
after. 

The Union of Lithuania with Poland stands 
forth as the greatest historical fact in Central 
Europe. It brought immense advantage to the 
national development of the Poles and the Lithu- 
anians, and it rendered a huge service to civiliza- 
tion, because, so united, the two people were 



Poland and the World of Peace 21 

enabled all the more to check the advance of 
Germanism East, and the outpour of the Asiatic 
hordes West. In fact, the reason why Lithuania 
joined Poland was to make herself and Poland 
safe against German propaganda that was car- 
ried through the agency of the Knights of the 
Cross. Here is an object lesson both to the Poles 
and the Lithuanians, and to the statesmen who 
will remake Europe. For the danger which con- 
fronted the two people in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries, is confronting them again at 
this time, and unless a free and united Poland 
and Lithuania work out their national destinies 
in concert and union, neither they nor the world 
will be safe against the Prussian aim of world 
dominion. 

What the world suffers from the weird Prus- 
sianism today, Poland suffered five hundred years 
ago. And what the world learned of the selfish 
aim of Prussia today, in Poland every child knew 
for centuries past. 

Germany originally extended up to the Oder. 
East of this river lived a Slavic people. Pom- 
erania was a Slavic province belonging to Poland, 



22 Poland in the World of DemocraCV". 



and Silesia was anything but a German territory. 
By inroads, murderous raids, by treason and 
intrigues, by fomenting divisions and setting up 
small kingdoms among these peoples, exactly as 
they are doing at preesnt, the Germans 
suppressed and swallowed them up one 
after the other. The German expansion in 
the East reached its greatest area towards 
the close of the fourteenth century. 
Through the agency of the Knights of the 
Cross, Prussianism engulfed Courland, Livonia 
and Esthonia, and would have devoured, no 
doubt, Lithuania and Poland, had these two 
nations not united and signally defeated the 
German Princes in the famous battle of Grun- 
wald, 1410. But for Grunwald, Prussia would 
have long ago annexed the countries and de- 
stroyed the peoples she has recently taken pos- 
session of, and realized her dream of a Pan- 
Germany. And she would have, beyond all doubt, 
reached a point where Democracy were powerless 
to overcome it. 

But the Prussian danger was not the only 
problem Poland had by her very geographic posi- 



Poland and the World of Peace 23 



tion and ethnic tendency to deal with. From the 
East and the South, the Muscovites, the Tartars 
and the Turks kept constantly pressing West. 
Warna in 1444, and Vienna in 1638, were only 
two of a hundred places where Poland saved West- 
ern civilization from its inevitable destruction by 
these unbridled hordes. Poland spent half of her 
life as sentinel, sword in hand, gun leveled and 
eye strained, watching for the troublesome enemy 
to spring to her doom and to the doom of Europe. 
Precisely for this reason the manifold internal 
progress that characterized Poland from her in- 
ception is all the more worthy of notice. Already 
in 1347 Casimir the Great, who is not improperly 
called the Polish Charlemagne, instituted the 
Statutes of Wislica. They were the Magna Charta 
of Poland, and were promulgated shortly after 
Frederick II of Germany published his laws, and 
St. Louis of France declared his Institutes of 
I^aw. As far back as 1430, Poland issued her 
memorable law : Neminem captivahimus nisi jure 
victum, which antedated the famous English law : 
Habeas Corpus, by nearly two centuries and a 
half. 



24 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

In Education, Poland marvelously kept abreast 
with other nations. The University of Cracow, 
founded by Casimir the Great in 1364, at once 
became the main center of education in the Near 
East. It reached its full tide of fame and effi- 
ciency in the age of the Humanities, when schol- 
ars from Italy and France, Spain and Germany 
crowded her halls. The great Polish astronomer, 
Copernicus, was taught at this University. Oxford 
was not more to England, and the University of 
Paris to France, than the Jagiellonian University 
was to Poland and to the Near Eastern Countries. 

But the worst "encomium'^ that had been at- 
tributed to the Poles as a nation, was that they 
were not able to self-govern and that their 
"anarchy" and the "Liberum Veto" brought them 
to a pass, where they seemingly stood helpless, 
calling upon foreign Powers to help them out of 
their inextricable chaos. And it became a fashion 
with historians and non-historians alike to insist 
upon the "anarchy" in Poland as the one reason 
of her downfall, and to speak of the weak points 
in the Polish government with a nineteenth and 
twentieth century mind, which has been inured 



Poland and the World of Peace 25 

to admiring the elaborated systems of democratic 
governments. The common mistake has been to 
give credit to the free nations for the progress 
they made since the partition of Poland, and 
comparing twentieth century nations to Poland 
of the seventeenth century. Nearly everyone who 
professes to have any knowledge of Polish history 
will tell you with that bluntness that either 
bespeaks a strong conviction or total misinforma- 
tion, if not ignorance, that the Poles were not 
able to self -govern, though he will concede that 
the century and a half under foreign rule made 
them as fit as any nation to work out their own 
independent national life. 

It came to be common knowledge since the war 
opened how historical facts can be distorted and 
made to suit particular aims. And what was 
easier for the enemies of Poland than to proclaim 
and keep repeating it to the world that the Poles 
were unable to self-govern, and that they had to 
be taken care of. The time was very well suited 
for tbat propaganda. France had her own trou- 
bles. England and Spain were perhaps too far 
to be interested in Poland. America was an 



26 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



infant Republic. Besides, it was only the present 
war that developed the thesis in Europe that it 
is wrong not to safeguard, and even enter war 
for, the interests of another nation without look- 
ing for material gain. 

It should be remembered that to speak of 
"anarchy" as the cause of Poland's downfall is 
to speak of a period in the Polish history, as the 
attempt has been made to show in the chapter: 
"The So-Called Polish Anarchy," covering about 
eighty years, and extending from the beginning 
of the seventeenth century down to the first parti- 
tion. This was the time when foreigners prin- 
cipally occupied the Polish throne, and when the 
Liberum Veto proved a fatal weapon in the hands 
of foreign candidates for the throne. This is 
clearly a very short period in the long Polish 
history, which was particularly noted for an 
exemplary governmental efficiency. Besides, 
there was practically no country in Europe at 
that time to be free from political disturbances, 
invariably worse than those in Poland. Italy had 
her anarchy. France had hers. Spain was not 
free from it. Germany especially was rent with 



Poland and the World of Peace 2^ 

strifes and political upheavals, which came per- 
haps to their most critical pass in the time of 
Sobieski's victory over the Turks at Vienna. Had 
any of these countries occupied the territorial 
position of Poland, nothing is so certain than 
that they would have met the doom of Poland, 
and declared, after their fall, incapable of self- 
government like the Poles. 

The Liberum Veto which is invariably found 
on the lips of those who are not particularly 
friendly to Poland, was not exactly that assinine 
institution which had its origin in some chronic 
governmental inaptitude, but it was a logical, 
though a rather excessive, development of the 
unadulterated democratic bent of the Poles. It 
must be remembered that in practical applica- 
tion, outside of the short period of its abuse, it 
was a principle of the majority and the minority. 
Its complete abolition, however, by the Constitu- 
tion of the Third of May, 1791, should be remem- 
bered along with the short period when it 
wrought evil. 

But the Pole today can point out with pride 
that his nation had never been given to that 



28 . Poland in the World of Democracy. 

tribalism and imperialism which plunged the 
world in such horrors, menacing Eight and Free- 
dom and Liberty. Had the Powers devoted their 
time to studying and copying the Democracy of 
Poland instead of partitioning her, the world 
would have been spared the horrors of the present 
war. America would not need to declare war on 
Germany in an effort to make the world safe for 
Democracy. For Poland would have made De- 
mocracy safe for the world. Europe would have 
long ago formed a league of nations, working out 
their national life in peace and concert, even as 
Poland and Lithuania and Ruthenia worked out 
their political life in peace and concert. 

Another common misconception in the average 
mind is, that Poland was so weakened by strifes 
and intrigues that the neighboring Powers simply 
walked in as a matter of fact and took what 
territory they pleased. The fact is, that the Poles 
were just so weak and so indifferent as were the 
Belgians and the Servians when Prussian imper- 
ialism trampled them into the earth. And the 
usurping Powers were just as free to take their 
territory as they were free to take Belgium and 



Poland and the World of Peace 29 

Servia. Poland was brought to her knees by the 
grasping imperialism at a time when the most 
sweeping reforms enlivened every vein of her life, 
promising the best results both to herself and to 
the world. The Commission of Education, which 
was really the first Ministry of Education in 
Europe, was at once a further development of the 
medieval intellectualism of the Poles, and a start- 
ing point to that exuberant intellectual growth 
that characterized the Poles under foreign rule. 
The Constitution of the Third of May was an 
embodiment and a synthesis of that political pol- 
ish of the Poles, which became a part and portion 
of them for centuries before they reluctantly bent 
their knee to Might. The systematic economic 
and industrial reforms and progress, which was 
brought to life while the last partition had yet 
twenty years to come, constituted a happy ante- 
cedent to that phenomenal economic and indus- 
trial progress, which the Poles achieved to the 
dismay of their usurpers. And as to living in 
the spirit of their Constitution of the Third of 
May, what people have been more single-eyed and 
whole-hearted in their support of Democracy 
both here in America and abroad? 



30 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

But the sterling qualities of the Poles which 
made the world admire them and pronounce them 
the fittest of the suppressed nations to self- 
govern, would mean little to Democracy had they 
not made possible a united and independent Po- 
land, and had this Poland not helped to carry out 
the war program as outlined by the Allied govern- 
ments. Civilization has reached a point where it 
is unsafe to consider the welfare of one people, 
or one group of peoples, as an isolated fact. 
And Humanity has wisely resolved that either 
Prussianism wins the struggle, and the freedom 
of the world vanishes for centuries, or Democracy 
wins, and nations will be left free to work out 
their own destinies, "unhindered, unthreatened, 
unafraid, the little along with the strong and the 
powerful.'^ But history and the sinister war aims 
of the Prussian war lords point out with a clear- 
ness that cannot be mistaken, that unless Poland 
is restored her freedom, nothing can stop Prussia 
from realizing her dream of the Mittel Europa, 
and from eventually subduing and enslaving the 
world. 

To re-establish Poland, then, is not merely to 
restore justice to a down-trodden people, who 



Poland and the World of Peace 31 

would at once become the sixth greatest nation 
in Europe. But it is to build a cornerstone to 
Democracy. It is to wreck Prussia's "Mittel 
Europa" scheme. It is to destroy the inevitable 
Prussian plan for a world dominion. 

Open the map of Europe as drawn by the Pan- 
Germanists. From Calais to Petrograd, the Baltic 
sea is called the German lake. Sweden, Norway 
and Denmark in the North, Belgium, Holland 
and a part of France in the West, Lithuania and 
Poland in the East, and Euthenia with Odessa 
and the Balkan States in the South, are marked 
for inclusion in the Prussian project of world 
dominion. Think of the Baltic provinces falling 
into Prussian hands, think of the countries and 
peoples that would be added to Germany by Prus- 
sia drawing a line from the Gulf of Finland 
southeastward to the Sea of Azof. Think of the 
double route — one through Russia, the other 
through the Balkan States — that would lead 
Germany to the wealth of the Far East in the 
incredible event she retained control over the 
Near Eastern countries, and you can imagine the 
attempted world enslavement by Prussianism. 



32 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Nothing but a complete victory of the Allies, and 
an immediate rectification of the Near Eastern 
question on the principle of nationalism and com- 
plete independence is going to save the world for 
Democracy. 

The present seizure and domination by Ger- 
many of the countries in the Near East is not a 
war measure that is to cease with the cessation 
of hostilities. It is a political and commercial 
project which Germany had planned long before 
the war, and which inspires every Prussian from 
the Kaiser down to his lowest "Diener." The 
spirit of the Pan-Germanists, which is openly cul- 
tivated by the "Alldeutscher Verband'' is a dis- 
concerting proof of the wide following official 
Germany has in her project of a "Welt-politik." 

"Open the map," says Naumann in the midst 
of the war, "and see what lies between the Vistula 
and the Vosges, what between Galicia and the 
Bodensee ! This area can be conceived only as a 
unit, as a well-articulated brotherland, as a con- 
federation of defense, as a self-sufficing economic 
district." "Some one should make room; either 
the Slavs of the West or the South, or ourselves ! 



Poland and the World of Peace 33 

As we are the strongest, the choice will not be 
difficult. ... A greater Germany is possible 
only through a struggle with Europe," says Tan- 
nenberg in his book, ^^Gross-Deutschland," pub- 
lished in 1911 in Leipsic. Or read what Tannen- 
berg says in another passage of the same book: 
"On the one side. Greater Germany, a world 
power, a country industrial and commercial; on 
the other, the Magyars, the Rumanians, the Serbs, 
the Bulgars, the Albanians, the Greeks — peoples 
exclusively cultural. . . . By that accord, the 
commerce of the East, of Syria, of Mesopotamia 
would fall into our hands." Or recall the words 
of Prince von Bulow: "It is a law of life and 
development in history that where two national 
civilizations meet, they fight for ascendency. In 
the struggle between nationalities, one nation is 
the hammer and the other the anvil; one is the 
victor and the other the vanquished." "We must 
not put might before right, but equally little shall 
we and can we dispense with might. In the 
future, as in the past, the German people will 
have to seek firm cohesion in its glorious army 
and in its belaureled young fleet," writes Lieuten- 



34 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ant-General Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, 
Deputy Chief of the German General Staff. 

In the face of this annexationist spirit that 
possesses official Germany, and in the face of her 
avowed political doctrines that underlie this 
spirit, in the face of the loot she is grasping 
from the famished peoples in the East, and the 
plans she lays in the East preparatory to swal- 
lowing up these peoples and annexing their terri- 
tory — it is forcibly plain how hypocritical are 
her claims, that she is freeing these unfortunate 
peoples from the "Russian" despotism, which no 
longer exists. '' 

To obtain something like a comprehensive scope 
of the danger that lies to Democracy in the "Made 
in Germany'' countries in the Near East, it is 
sufficient to recall Germany's policy towards the 
Poles in Posen and West Prussia and Silesia, and 
the people of Alsace-Lorraine. And, to under- 
stand the duties of Democracy here, it is suffi- 
cient to understand what an undefeated Prussia 
would do in case she retained control over the 
kingdoms she set up with an ulterior purpose. 
What Prussia did to the Poles in Posen, and to 



Poland and the World of Peace 35 

the Alsatians in Alsace-Lorraine, that she would 
do to the peoples in Russian Poland, Finland and 
Lithuania and Ruthenia. There is no reason to 
try to believe that Prussia's first task after the 
war would be other than to extirpate the enslaved 
peoples on her Eastern border. But there is 
every reason to show that an undefeated German 
Empire would use every atom of its energy and 
every ounce of its resources to the realization of 
a Pan-Germany as outlined, for instance, by 
Tannenberg. 

In the unbelievable event of a German victory, 
what would be the fate of the Near Eastern 
peoples? The answer is dazzlingly simple. 

In thirty years Prussia would have enslaved 
over 50,000,000 people, and incorporated into her 
state an area as great as the present Germany. 
From the cessation of the war up to about 1940, 
Prussia's chief aim in the East would be to realize 
the dream of her Pan-Germany propagandists, by 
measures which are altogether too well known to 
the world. With a hypocrisy and malicious 
astuteness that are characteristically Prussian, 
Germany would at first surround the natives 



36 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

with her "protectorate," while under its cover, 
she would carry on a denationalization policy 
which would make these unfortunate peoples 
permanent martyrs, and the Prussian officials, 
permanent oppressors. Prussian institutions and 
laws would so limit their activity that they 
would become mere automatons to the Prussian 
war god. 

With Dantzig, Riga and Libau and Odessa in 
Prussia's grip, and with Prussian officials at the 
arteries of their economic and political life, the 
lot of these peoples would be that of the medieval 
serfs. From morning till night the Lithuanians 
and the Poles and the Ruthenians would be forced 
by every economic and political pressure to till 
the soil to feed the Prussian officials, and Prus- 
sian ammunition producers. They would be re- 
quired to feed the full and numerous regiments 
that would form and drill to be led, in the nearest 
possible future, to the conquest of such peoples 
as might till that time succeed in escaping the 
Prussian "Kultur.'^ 



Poland and the World of Peace Zl 



The millions of marks, which but yesterday the 
Reichstag voted for the expropriation of the Poles 
in Posen — the forcible imposition of the Prussian 
"Kultur" into the Polish schools there — the na- 
tional indignity and political proscription the 
Poles suffered at the hand of Prussia up to the 
war, must not only strike fear into the hearts 
of the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Finns and the 
Ruthenians — when they see Prussianism hover 
over them, but frighten peoples separated from 
Prussia by seas. In thirty years their land would 
be fairly in the Prussian grip. Impoverished by 
the war, and made to pay heavy taxes to help 

mend the Prussian state, the natives would be 
forced to sell their land into German hands. And 
with the land in the hands of German land- 
owners, Prussia would consider the countries 
naturally hers. The natives would be labeled as 
foreigners, and not unlikely, expatriated, as thou- 
sands of Poles were expatriated from Posen in 
the time of Bismarck. Should Prussia become 
victorious, or, at any rate, not beaten to her 
knees, Germanization of these countries would 



38 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

most naturally take the widest sweep. In this 
incredible event, it would not be long when Prus- 
sia would declare it a crime for the Finns, the 
Lithuanians and Ruthenians to speak any other 
language but the German. With "Mittel Europa" 
under her foot, Prussia would order the whole 
world to bend its knee to her "Kultur.'^ 

Prussia's attempt in creating the various phan- 
tom kingdoms in the Near East is the meanest 
hypocritical move Prussian glory-drunk mind has 
yet been father to. It is a vicious travesty on the 
program of the allied nations. It is a political 
mockery and an insult to the Allies and to the 
unfortunate nationalities concerned. Self-glory 
is Prussia's object. Enslavement of these miser- 
able peoples, her goal. A cornerstone to Ger- 
many's future world dominion is laid here by 
Prussia. A menace of the future world peace 
lurks in the ^* Drang Nach Osten" Germany. 

The projected usurpation by Prussia of Poland 
and the other countries, involves a problem which 
acutely touches the world. It concerns America 



Poland and the World of Peace 39 

n il • - — — ■ ■ ^■■.■~ —•grn If- I — 1 — T 1 T [ ■■ ■! III! nil 11 ■mi im m ■■i h iimi iimiiiwiii ibi ii i ■ iii i iir iiimr n m n ii i mm 

no less than it concerns Europe, because were 
Prussia to succeed in her schemes in the East, the 
time would not be far off when the Prussian 
junkers would divide America as they divided 
Poland a century and more ago. 



Chaptee II. 

POLAND'S HISTOEICAL EIGHT 

(EXTERNAL). 

"From the reign of Chrohry the Great, to the 
Crime of 1772, the ehivalry of Poland repelled 
ninety-two Tartar invasions, any one of which, if 
successful, would have at least jeopardized the 
existence of European civilization,'^ 

— Parsons — History of the Polish Catholicity and 
the Russian "Orthodoxy.'^ Vol. V, p. 74. 

What is the history of Poland's titles: "The 
Most Orthodox/' "The Greatest Medieval Com- 
monwealth/' "The Bulwark of Christendom"? 
What advantage have they brought to Humanity, 
and do they constitute factors to positively react 
on the Polish problem today? 

From the tenth century up to the time of the 
Partitions, 1770, Poland possessed a territory 
which, for extent, was in keeping with her politi- 
cal splendor. "In size^ Poland outranks nearly 

1 Showalter — Historic — Geographical Study. 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 41 



every nation of the continent, even now Russia 
alone of the European nations is larger than Po- 
land was at her greatest. In population she stood 
at the forefront of Europe ; only Russia and Ger- 
many today have greater populations than are 
to be found on the lands that once were Poland ; 
for unpartitioned Poland had an area of 272,000 
square miles and the lands that once lay within 
her boundaries, now support a population of fifty 
million. In area she was as large as the German 
Empire, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Den- 
mark together ; there dwells at present a popula- 
tion larger than that of France, Belgium and 
Holland combined." 

Poland, in the course of her history, had power 
to arrest the growth of her neighbors, who later 
conspired to divide her. Prussia was originally 
a Polish province, and Albrecht of Brandenburg 
was made by Poland, in the early part of the 
sixteenth century, prince of Prussia, with the 
stipulation that he and his successors forever 
remain vassals to the Polish King. Matejko, the 
eminent Polish painter, immortalized the Prus- 
sian vassalage to Poland by his famous painting, 



42 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

"The Prussian Bringing Tribute.'^ To the world, 
Matejko's picture means a piece of art. But to 
the Poles, it pictures the past, when Poland was 
the kind mistress to the very same Prussians who 
now are her cruel oppressors. It brings to their 
mind that every Prussian prince paid homage to 
the Kings of Poland until the end of the seven- 
teenth century. Under King Batory, Poland held 
complete dominion over Kussia. The Russians 
even insisted that the Polish King allow his son 
to rule over them. But the latter, for religious 
and racial reasons, justly declined their royal 
sceptre, and Poland, far from usurping the con- 
quered country, left it totally to its own rule. 
Austria lay at the mercy of Sobieski in 1683, 
when the Turk besieged Vienna, and Austria had 
no power to resist the inevitable deluge by the 
Crescent. 

Poland's sudden appearance among the family 
of nations was in keeping with the nature of her 
national mission. It was not until the undefined 
chaos of peoples began to crystalize into the now 
nations, not until the Goths and the Huns had 
disappeared from Western Europe, that Poland 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 43 

emerged as a nation, with Mieszko as ruler, in 
the latter part of the ninth century. Poland's 
territory then embraced the country between the 
Oder and the Vistula, together with what was 
then designated as the Cracovian territory. 
Almost simultaneously with the acquisition of 
her national franchise, Poland embraced Chris- 
tianity, at the instance of Mieszko and his pious 
consort, Dombrowka. From the beginning, re- 
ligion in Poland became so inseparably linked 
with patriotism, that even today they are synony- 
mous terms with the Poles. 

Mieszko laid the foundation for the Polish com- 
monwealth, while his eldest son and successor, 
Chrobry, justly surnamed the Great, roughly out- 
lined its super-structure. "Chrobry^ was one of 
the greatest princes of the middle ages, whether 
he be regarded as a warrior, legislator or admin- 
istrator ; in fact, he was the Polish Charlemagne.^' 
It is a remarkable fact, that from the inception 
of her national life, Poland rose to a power that 
made her one of the principal states of Europe. 

1 Parsons — History of the Polish Catholicity and the Rus- 
sian "Orthodoxy." 



44 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

The sudden expansion of Poland from the Baltic 
to the Black seas, under Chrobry the Great, her 
military splendor which commanded the respect 
of the neighboring countries, the visit Otto III 
of Germany paid the King of Poland with a view 
to forming an alliance with him, the jurisprud- 
ence and administratorship of her prince, the 
establishment of the first Polish Archbishopric 
in Gnesen with its dependent Sees, the solemn 
coronation of Chrobry the Great as King of 
Poland by the Archbishop of Gnesen — are some 
of the events to show the unusually rapid na- 
tional development of the Polish State. 

Every nation has its characteristic features to 
individualize it from other nations. Greece brings 
to mind poetry, culture and fine arts ; Rome, law 
and militarism ; Ireland, persecution for religion ; 
America, freedom and democracy. Poland's char- 
acteristic feature is her appreciation of freedom 
and chivalry founded on religious motives. Par- 
sons gives the key to the Polish Chivalry in 
motive and end when he says: "From the reign 
of Chrobry the Great to the Crime of 1772, the 
Chivalry of Poland repelled ninety-two Tartar 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 45 

invasions, any one of which, if successful, would 
have at least jeopardized the existence of Euro- 
pean civilization. For many centuries that chiv- 
alry was the sole barrier of Europe against the 
triumph of Muscovite ambition. The reason of 
the Polish success is to be found not in the un- 
questionable valor of the Polish heart, but in the 
religious tie that bound the Poles together." 
Van Norman^ gives a no less comprehensive ap- 
preciation of Poland^s characteristic trait or her 
national mission; he says: "The champion, the 
knight-errant of Christianity, the Pole became 
the most devoted, zealous cavalier that ever drew 
blade in defense of his mistress. For her, the 
church, he fought, bled and died. While other 
peoples went after strange gods and sought sor- 
did gain, he expired amid fields of ice or burned 
out his life on the arid plains of the south. His 
history is one long crusade in defense of the Holy 
Church." 

The Poland of Chrobry the Great was ready to 
meet, though of necessity with disaster to herself, 
the great Tartar invasion in 1241. Historians do 

1 Poland the Knight Among Nations. 



46 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

not exaggerate when they say that all Europe 
would be an easy prey to the Tartars in the early 
part of the thirteenth century, had not Poland 
set out 10,000 knights strong, to stay them. 
Henry the Pious of Poland, a prototype of So- 
bieski under Vienna, encountered the enemy at 
Leignitz in 1241. Through strategy and by rea- 
son of an overwhelming enemy, the Polish King 
became defeated, but he stayed the barbarous 
Tartar, and saved Europe from a calamitous in- 
vasion. 

But, if there is any event in Polish history to 
portray the national spirit in its non-aggressive- 
ness and its broad political ideals, and to render 
a classical service to mankind by stopping the 
German expansion eastward, and by successfully 
opposing the idea Prussianism, the way the world 
struggles against it today — it is the union of 
Poland with Lithuania, 1569. "And never be- 
fore,'' says Mickiewicz^, "was there this union of 
nations. But it shall be afterwards. 

"For this union and marriage of Lithuania 
with Poland is a figure of the future union of all 

1 Books of the Polish Pilgrimage. 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 47 

Christian nations in the name of knowledge and 
Freedom." The two nations formed the first com- 
monwealth of its kind in Europe, and rendered 
a classical example of a democratic government. 
It was unique and altogether novel for the time 
for two free and strong nations, with a territory 
which was greater for extent than that of Ger- 
many today, to unite their forces and their hands 
to forget their ancient feuds and unite in their 
work for the progress of civilization. So united, 
the two nations repulsed the Tartars, placed a 
barrier in the way of the German expansion, and 
established a Republic under one King, one 
Treasury and one Parliament, though with sepa- 
rate administration. 

The causes that led to the union of Poland with 
Lithuania were, curiously enough, the same that 
call for a re-establishment of Poland and her re- 
union with Lithuania today : the aggressiveness 
of Prussia. To the Northeast of Poland lay 
Lithuania, then as yet a pagan country. Further 
North was a country inhabited by the Prussians, 
also pagans, and noted for their cruelty and those 
strange political doctrines which mark them to- 



48 Poland in the World of Democracy, 



day. Whilst warring among themselves, they 
made frequent raids on the adjoining Polish 
provinces, and every effort Poland took to intro- 
duce Christian civilization among them, brought 
but scant results. In a final effort, Poland intro- 
duced into her territory, at the instance of Con- 
rad of Masovia, the Teutonic Knights to convert 
the Prussians. 

The Order was not a political but essentially 
a religious body. The Knights were bound by 
strict religious vows. They were forbidden to 
amass wealth, to raise arms against Christian 
princes and never to establish an independent 
state. They were missionaries, and as such, Con- 
rad of Masovia invited them into Poland. 

Unfortunately, the Teutonic Knights turned 
out to be, under the cloak of religion, the most 
unrelenting exterminators of the people they 
went to convert. They formed a military oli- 
garchy, and, as power came to them, they prosti- 
tuted the very name of Christianity, and so ruled 
the Prussians that the latter begged their more 
powerful neighbors, the Poles, to assist them in 
throwing off their bondage. Religion with the 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 49 

Order was simply a convenient cloak to shield 
a corrupt and rapacious government. Having 
provoked constant rebellions among their Prus- 
sian converts, and nearly exterminated them, the 
Knights replaced the depopulated country with 
German colonists, and ruled over them with the 
iron rod of the despot. Their next object was 
to overrun and subdue Lithuania, which was then 
yet pagan. But the latter prudently united with 
Poland and accepted her civilization in prefer- 
ence to that of the Knights. 

Here the predatory inroads of the Knightly 
missionaries were brought to an end by the then 
powerful Poland. The religious Order of the 
Knights, which now assumed the nature of a 
political body, came to final reckoning with 
Poland and Lithuania in the memorable battle 
of Grunwald in 1410. There the Teutonic Knights 
became so completely defeated as never fully to 
recover. 

The results of the defeat of the Knights by 
Poland at Grunwald were weighty and far-ex- 
tensive. And while historians dwell at length on 
the peaceful converison and preservation of Lith- 



50 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

uania under the protection of Poland, the main 
results, however, that have an international bear- 
ing were these : the union of Poland with Lithu- 
ania, while they formed the greatest common- 
wealth of the latter Middle Ages, built on prin- 
ciples of Democracy, created an unbreakable bar- 
rier in the East against the yellow races that 
threatened Western civilization, and a tremen- 
dous setback to the development of Prussianism, 
which today upset the peace of the world. 

Even for this benefit she rendered mankind, 
Poland should never have been deprived of her 
right to self-government. The integrity of Poland 
should have been safeguarded as a precious jewel 
and an invaluable asset to the world. Poland 
deserved to live. She had a right to self-exist. 
For the constructive influence she wielded on 
Western civilization, her spoliation could not be 
called anything else than worse than crime — a 
folly, and the greatest political blunder. If the 
right to self-government Poland earned by what 
she rendered humanity up to the fourteenth cen- 
tury should evoke the strongest resentment 
against her Partition, what should be said of the 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 51 



violation of this same right after Poland freely 
rendered Christendom her great service at Vienna 
two centuries later? 

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, 
Europe was on the point of being overrun by the 
Turks. The Turkish danger particularly hung 
over the German Empire under Leopold I. In- 
subordination of the minor states and depend- 
encies, intrigues among the princes, competitions 
for the crown with their consequent civil strifes, 
were some of the conditions to weaken the Ger- 
man Empire shortly before the Turks besieged 
Vienna in 1683. Leopold I was sovereign of 
Austria and Emperor of Germany, and the nature 
of his governmental power varied with the many 
states he ruled. He held absolute power in some 
states, in others, merely nominal, which was hurt- 
ful to the centralization of power, and, naturally, 
weakened military efficiency. Another reason 
which would help the Turks to defeat Austria 
was the revolt of Hungary, with which Turkey 
hurriedly made common cause against their com- 
mon foe. Leopold had merely a nominal power 
in Hungary. The Hungarians, jealous of their 



52 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

self-government, guarded their laws and their 
customs with the utmost jealousy^ and any non- 
compliance of the Emperor with the decisions 
and laws of their riotous diets, were enough to 
provoke insurrections. During the short respite 
that followed the war with France, Leopold 
determined to put an end to the trouble in 
Hungary. He marched an army into their coun- 
try, to crush the Hungarian nobles with the 
utmost severity. He despoiled them of their time- 
honored national rights, instituted an unlimited 
despotism, and stationed there an army of thirty 
thousand troops to awe them into subjugation. 
Emeric Gekeli, who was the leader of the Hun- 
garians, fled his country, and if Hannibal ever 
hated Eome, Gekeli hated Vienna. Hungary 
would not forgive Leopold his policy, and when 
the Turks approached Vienna with a powerful 
army in 1683, they naturally found in the Hun- 
garians their warmest allies against their com- 
mon enemy. 

It is history that the Turks had always been a 
menace to the European civilization. They be- 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 53 



came a terror to Christendom as early as the 
early part of the fifteenth century. Fanatics in 
chivalry, with Constantinople in their possession 
and Greece under their sway, they advanced as 
far as the present Bosnia and Bulgaria, and 
would, in the words of Abbott^ "make all Europe 
tremble in view of their prowess, their ferocity 
and their apparently exhaustless legions." Up to 
the siege of Vienna, 1683, the Turks had not been 
defeated in a way not to be able to recover their 
prestige. A worthy type of the Huns under 
Attila, only better organized and therefore more 
dangerous, a worthy type of the Goths who sacked 
Rome, flushed with victories, fierce and semi- 
savage, enough civilized to know how to organize 
their forces so as to render more effective their 

wolf-like ferocity, the Turks poured forth count- 
less numbers from Southern Europe, swept and 
carried everything before them, making Europe 
justly tremble for its civilization and its very 
life. 

The Duke of Lorain set out to oppose them 
with 40,000 men. But the mere shadow of the 
Turk prompted him to save his army by a quick 

1 Austria, Its Rise and Present Power, p. 64. 



54 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

retreat into the interior of Austria. The Em- 
peror, no longer safe in his capital, left the city 
at night. Vienna was in despair. Europe trembled ; 
civilization hung in the balance ; for the handful 
of soldiers to oppose the Infidel, the dilapidated 
garrisons, the city reduced to the last extremity 
for want of provisions — all concerted to put the 
victory into the hands of the Turks. 

Such was the danger that hung over Europe 
in 1683, and, but for Poland, she would have fal- 
len under the Turkish yoke. "Save Christianity," 
Kome called out to Sobieski ; "Save the Empire," 
pleaded the German Emperor. True to the tradi- 
tions of his knightly forefathers, Sobieski merely 
answered: "It is our duty," and like another 
Washington at Princetown or Napoleon at Wag- 
ram, the Polish King led his indomitable horse- 
men to save the day for Europe. 

No victory proved more decisive and fruitful 
of good results than the victory Sobieski won 
over the Turks in 1683. No torrent could have 
swept the army of the Grand Vizier as had So- 
bieski's veterans. With one hand, Sobieski cut 
the foe, never to rise; with the other, he bid 



Poland's Historical Right (External). 55 

Europe rise from her terror. The Crescent has 
forever been darkened, whilst the Cross and the 
Double Eagle triumphed. Vienna rejoiced and 
kissed Sobieski's very cloak. The Cathedral, 
where the Christian Knight went to give thanks 
to God for his signal victory, trembled with the 
mighty song of thanksgiving. "Modern Europe 
owes Poland for the fact that it is not today 
either Turkish or Muscovite.''^ "But^ for Polish 
valor. Western civilization would have been 
blighted — Christianity itself perhaps engulfed. 
Poland was the sentinel which kept watch on the 
Eastern gate of Europe, while Latin civilization, 
in the person of France, flowered and taught the 
world." 

For her victories over the Turks Poland was 
called the "Bulwark of Christendom." 

It was this Poland of which Talleyrand says: 
"The annihilation of Poland was worse than a 
crime; it was a folly." It was this Poland the 
great Napoleon called: "The Keystone to Eu- 

1 Parsons — History of the Polish Catholicity and The Rus- 
sian "Orthodoxy." 

^Van Norman — Poland the Knight Among Nations, p. 18. 



56 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

rope." This Poland of which Maria Theresa of 
the very German Empire Poland saved from cer- 
tain annihilation a century before, exclaimed 
after signing her Partition : "When I have been 
long dead the consequence of this violation of 
all that until now has been deemed holy and just 
will be experienced." Just as the patricians of 
ancient Rome were the defenders of the Roman 
people, so the Poles were the patricians of the 
Christian people in Western Europe. It was not 
without reason that Poland was called the hand- 
maid of Christian civilization. If there was a 
right well earned, it was the historical right of 
Poland. And if there ever were a right that 
was most ignominiously violated, it was again 
the historical right of Poland. But if, in the 
economy of justice, every violation of a right 
must be atoned for and satisfied, and because 
nations have only a temporal existence, and 
await no reward in the hereafter, then surely 
Poland's historical right cannot be long ignored. 
It is such convictions that strengthened the Poles 
in their hope of a future Poland, and made them 
ever sing : "Poland is not yet lost !" 



Chapter III. 

POLAND'S HISTORICAL RIGHT 

(INTERNAL). 

'^It would he a genuine gain for civilization 
and permanent peace if there could he constituted 
a Polish Kingdom, including Poles of Poland 
(Russia) as well as Austria and Germany/ 



J} 



— Frank H. Simonds — Review of Reviews. 

The history of Poland exhibits characteristics 
that could serve as the best offsets to militarism 

and those state policies the world determined to 
crush today. Poland was nouraggressive and 
tolerant. An offensive warfare was contrary to 
her constitution, and all the wars Poland waged 
were of a defensive nature. Poland never made 
war to acquire a neighbor's territory, to gain 
political pre-eminence, and to impose her law 
upon the world. To Poland fled all persecuted 
peoples; for there was more religious toleration 
than in the rest of Europe. The Poles never for- 
got to make their King, before the election, swear 
that he would tolerate all sects within the king- 



58 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

dom. "If you will not take the oath," said the 
Marshal to Henry of Valois, "you will not rule." 
From France, wandered Huguenots ; from Spain, 
came the victims of the inquisitions; Pilgrims 
journeyed from Britain. In Poland Jew and 
Gentile worshiped in peace. 

The political policy of Poland stands in a rigid 
independence of the Prussian policy. In the light 
of the Prussian Political doctrines, where the 
state is considered supreme to religion, and to 
national traditions, where people are suppressed, 
persecuted, expropriated and ousted from their 
very homesteads, for the one end of the deified 
state, Poland's historical non-aggressiveness and 
tolerance have no meaning. Prussia wages wars 
to acquire territories and to assume political 
power. "Germany," recently said a high German 
official, "could only dispose of her Polish posses- 
sion if she took possession of Belgium, and incor- 
porated that country into the German Empire," 
forgetting that the national rights of the Belgians 
are anterior to the aggression of Germany. Why 
did Poland not make use of chances she had in 
her hands to acquire territories, to subdue peoples 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 59 

and try to metamorphose their very national char- 
acter? Why did the Poles not attempt to forc- 
ibly assimilate smaller nationalities, to incorpo- 
rate them into their own race, to blot out their 
nationality, to exterminate them, to "Ausrotten" 
them? Did they, better than their oppressors, 
understand the futility of interfering with God's 
very plan that each nation should live a separate 
life, that the character of a race cannot be eradi- 
cated without an almost total disappearance of 
the people? Poland had them in her power. 
Sobieski could remain passive when the Turks 
threatened Vienna, even make common cause 
with them, the way Germany did today, and seize 
territories on the plea of ^^progressive politics." 
The answer is simple : Poland was pre-eminently 
a Catholic democracy. Her religion entered into 
the nature of her constituiton, and she scrupu- 
lously adhered to the principle of Christian 
morality : "Give to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's." 

Parsons has well said: "In that devoted land 
(Poland) the names of Catholicism and country 
invoke each other," and "religion and patriotism 



60 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

are synonymous terms with the Polish." And 
Van Norman: "Religion^ and patriotism are so 
closely identified with the Poles that it is difficult 
to separate them, and the connection had its 
origin in historic and geographical reasons." 
There is no other country perhaps where religion 
entered into the government and became its guid- 
ing spirit in the way it did in Poland. Whether 
in regard to internal relation, or external negoti- 
ations, the state had never infringed on the rights 
of the church. It was but fit that from her 
inception Poland should be designated with the 
rare epithet of ^Most Orthodox.' When in the 
beginning of the thirteenth century, various polit- 
ical factions arose in Poland, consequent upon 
the unhappy territorial apportionment among 
her various princes, the Church constituted the 
centralizing factor, the center of gravity, to keep 
Poland united. The subsequent reunion of the 
various principalities into one kingdom, was prin- 
cipally brought about by the Polish clergy. Tar- 
tar incursions could devastate the country, floods 
and pestilence could impoverish and thin the 

1 Poland the Knight Among Nations. 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 61 

population, but religion would prove to the Pole 
the mainstay against disintegration. The Church 
in Poland wielded the most constructive influence 
on learning and civilization. Ecclesiastics held 
high offices in the state. One of the Kings of 
Poland, John Casimir, had been Cardinal prior 
to his coronation as king of Poland. "The Chief 
of the Senate," says Moltke\ "was the incumbent 
Archbishop of Gnesen, as Primate of the King- 
dom, the first in rank after the King, and even 
he himself was King during an interregnum, on 
which account he was also called interrex." The 
battle-hymn of the Polish Knights was the inspir- 
ing canticle : "Boga Rodzico Dziewico." 

"To mention one of the many customs," says 
Parsons, "which show how the Catholic spirit 
was identified with Polish patriotism; at the 
reading of the Gospel every noble drew his sword 
halfway out of his scabbard, in sign of his sworn 
devotion to the faith, even unto death." Henry the 
Pious sacrificed his life with his 10,000 knights 
on the fields of Liegnitz chiefly for the sake of 
Christianity. The impelling motive which led 

1 Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions in Poland. 



62 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Poland to unite herself to Lithuania was first to 
convert her to faith — to propagate Christianity, 
and to strengthen herself as a barrier against the 
Asiatic hordes that threatened Christianity. So- 
bieski hurried with his hussars to save Vienna 
against the Turks, not for his sake or the sake of 
his country, but purely for the sake of Christen- 
dom., 

Naturally the religious spirit in Poland proved 
the firmest antecedent to the strong faith of the 
Polish, when all the persecutions of Nero, under 
Catharine of Eussia, under Nicholas I, and Alex- 
ander II, and all the machinations of Bismarck 
availed naught, and exerted a wholesome influ- 
ence on the political development of the country. 
It was but natural that Poland's practical 
Catholicity should keep her immune from mili- 
tary aggressiveness, and from religious and politi- 
cal oppression of peoples who lived within her 
territories. The generosity Poland extended to 
all peoples was in keeping with her constitution. 
It were impossible for Poland, the Champion of 
Christianity, to rule over Lithuania with the 
mailed fist of the Prussians, to make her tradi- 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 63 

tions and national life subservient to the good 
of the state. It was natural for Poland to allow 
the Lithuanians, no less than the Ruthenians and 
other people, autonomy and freedom of con- 
science, pay honor and respect to their national 
customs and their traditions. Catholic Poland, 
which repeatedly saved Europe against the inva- 
sions of the yellow race of Asia, could not listen 
to the overtures the Turks made to her, not to 
interfere with their devastating advance upon 
Vienna. She could not think of allowing the 
Turks to overrun the German empire, weaken it 
beyond recovery and thereby gain political and 
territorial ascendency over it. A policy of this 
nature were diametrically opposed to Poland's 
national principles, and its very idea Poland 
would scorn outright. In ascendency over the 
Russians, Poland left them to themselves. When 
Prussia lay in her power, Poland would not think 
of usurping her possessions, of denationalizing 
the Prussians, and expropriating them of their 
land and their sacred birthright to freedom. 

For this reason Poland was called the Greatest 
Democracy in her time. She was safe against 



64 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



proving an invader; against carrying on aggres- 
sive wars to conquer and subdue nations, and rob 
them of their territory. It was because Poland 
acted on such principles that her wars were not 
of an offensive but merely defensive character, 
that during almost all her existence as a nation, 
Poland remained scrupulously honest to herself 
and to her neighbors ; that since her final struggle 
during the tenth and eleventh centuries to emerge 
into history at last a united nation, she never 
made war that she might acquire a neighbor's 
territory, or crush his national spirit. Her only 
desire was to live and let live, to preserve her 
unity, and to fulfill such duty as she had, by 
accident or birth, toward her faith, her traditions 
and her share of Western culture; that, like 
another United States, Poland was very tolerant, 
and in the words of Moltke: "was for a time 
justly called the promised land of the Jews.'' 

In the early republic of Poland, there breathed 
forth a love of freedom and toleration ; righteous- 
ness and justice. Such had been the moral mag- 
nitude of Poland, which historical right had been 
wantonly violated towards the end of the eight- 



Poland's Histoeical Right (Internal). 65 

eenth century — a right which Poland justly 
claims today. It is when writers at the present 
consider the placating influence a mid-European 
Poland would needs exert on the warring nations, 
that they speak of her as "the political equilib- 
rium of Europe," "the buffer state between Kus- 
sia, Germany and Austria," "the solution to the 
weightiest problems of modern Europe," and ex- 
claim: "who dares dispute that the national 
resurrection of Poland will contribute to re- 
establish the political tranquility and equilibrium 
of Europe upon a solid basis," while her suppres- 
sion they call with Brownson: "The greatest 
crime as well as political blunder." 

Poland's partition is justly styled the Greatest 
Crime of the Ages and an unprecedented violation 
of a people's right ! While on the one hand, the 
usurpers of Poland's rights could show no reason, 
or pretext that would at least paliate their high- 
way robbery, on the other, the Poles have repeat- 
edly manifested that they never relinquished 
their historical claim to independence and self- 
government. 



66 Poland in the Wori.d of Democracy. 



"While^ the principal neutral Powers alike de- 
serters of the rights and nations and betrayers 
of the liberties of Europe, saw the crime consum- 
mated without stretching forth an arm to prevent 
it," Polish statesmen established a constitution 
of whom the same writer says : "History will one 
day do justice to that illustrious body and hold 
out to posterity, as the perfect model of a most 
arduous reformation which fell to the ground 
from no want of wisdom on their part, but from 
the irresistible power and detestable wickedness 
of their enemies/^ 

There were no other people to more strongly 
resent the violation of their God-given rights 
than were the Poles. Whether by peaceful meas- 
ures during the years of the Partition, whether by 
armed uprisings after the Partition, whether by 
preserving her nationality intact and her racial 
character pure, whether by showing an intellec- 
tual capacity and moral soundness, a highly de- 
veloped patriotism and love of freedom, Poland 
has forcibly shown that never has she relin- 
quished her honorable and nobly earned histori- 
cal right to self-government, and that at no time 

1 Sir James MacKintosh — An Account of the Partitions of 
Poland— Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXXVII. 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 67 

has she considered it an entity separate and 
separable from the nation. 

While the Partitions were in progress, a Diet 
assembled at Warsaw in 1788 to establish a new 
constitution, both to better internal affairs and 
to offer a protest against the armed interference 
with the national integrity of Poland. Never 
had a body of reformers distinguished themselves 
for greater wisdom, competence and prudence. 
While we yet have to learn of a representative 
assembly invested with an authority more direct, 
deliberate, formal and complete, representing 
practically all the freemen, assembled with a 
view to reforming the government, we likewise 
have yet to hear a stronger resentment, a firmer 
vindication of an historical right than the decla- 
ration of Poland's national assembly, which scored 
Russia's false guarantees of 1776 as "null, an 
invasion of national independence, incompatible 
with the natural rights of every civilized society, 
and with the political privileges of every nation I" 

When these measures have failed and after the 
great Powers of Europe saw the crime consum- 
mated without stretching forth an arm to prevent 



68 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

it, Poland, rather than abjure her national right, 
strove to regain it by violent means ; for it today 
Nevin O. Winter^ could rightly say: "Poles have 
never forgotten the old Kingdom. They never 
cease to sigh for their lost independence. The 
bleeding heart is very much in evidence through- 
out all of Old Poland,'' that same feeling was a 
hundred times stronger, the sighs for their lost 
independence much deeper, their national wounds 
were more readily opened anew, their historical 
pride, too recent and too much humiliated not to 
provoke resentment immediately after the Par- 
titions. 

The Polish insurrections, though they failed 
to bring back freedom to the Poles, served as con- 
tinued protests against the dismemberment of 
Poland. Limmerick and Athlone failed to bring 
freedom to the Irish, but they were fruitful of 
results on the score of their national self-asser- 
tion. Holland and Belgium made the same truth 
clear in 1848. The reprisals of the nationalistic 
Hungarians were no less a protest against their 
oppression than a vindication of their rights to 

1 Poland of Today and Yesterday. 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 69 



an autonomous government. America could not 
better show and defend her right to independence 
than by fighting the War of Independence. The 
insurrections the Poles started to regain their 
freedom and independence and to allay their 
acute persecutions and violations of their natural 
rights and tradition-honored customs were proof 
that Poland had never relinquished her right to 
self-government. 

Yet stronger than the re-establishment of the 
Polish Constitution, and stronger than their law- 
ful uprisings in vindication of their undying 
right to self-government, has been the indestruc- 
tible national and religious character of the 
Poles. They were created Polish and were to 
stay Polish. They would not become Russian, 
for they were not made to become Russian. They 
would not become Prussian; their national soul 
and the soul of Prussia are as much opposed as 
is fire to water. Thebaud^ has well said that the 
character of the race once established, cannot be 

1 Ireland Past and Present. 



70 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



eradicated without an almost total disappearance 
of the people. This is classically true of the 
Poles. Although Catherine's Imperial injunc- 
tion: ^*We^ order that this invasion (when she 
despatched her Cossacks into Poland in 1768) 
destroy forever their name and race/' al- 
though Prussia's theory ^^Ausrotten" the Poles 
has received sanction in the attempted banish- 
ment of the Polish language, in the curtailment 
of religion and patriotism, the Polish nationality 
has remained unimpaired. The Poles had the 
most encouraging sentiments expressed about 
them by Americans who made a study of Poland. 
*^If Poland is dead as a political entity," says 
Nevin 0. Winter^, ^^she is very much alive in 
every other way. The ancient fire still burns in 
her poets and authors, and the bookstalls are 
crowded with their productions. This life mani- 
fests itself in her arts and crafts which astonish 
the beholder of their artistic merit," though he 
tells us that "Prussia spared no effort to German- 
ize the Polish province from the beginning of her 
sovereignty, and the original Prussia has become 

1 Parsons, History of the Polish Catholicity and the Rus- 
sian "Orthodoxy," 

2 Poland of Today and Yesterday. 



Poland's Historical Right (Internal). 71 



the modern Germany/' and: "The ambition of 
Germany is boundless and the unfortunate Poles 
have been caught in this maelstrom." "Walk the 
streets of these cities/' says Van Norman^ "tramp 
through the country districts of these same prov- 
inces and you will find that the people are Sla- 
vonic in characteristics and in speech even that 
there is only a very thin veneer of official Ger- 
manization. To the world which sees only the 
map, it is Posen, Danzig, Breslau, Crakau, Lem- 
berg. Actually to the people who live in these 
places or who do business in them, it is Poznan, 
Gdansk, Wroclaw, Krakow and Lwow, as it was 
when Poland was at the height of her power." 
Today the sons of Henry the Pious, Casimir the 
Great, of Sobieski the Mighty and Kosciuszko 
the Free, more than ever claim their nobly earned 
historical right of self-government. 

Surely, "The Partition^ of Poland was worse 
than a Crime; it was a folly." And if historic 
principles such as those of nationality do not 
stop in their actions until they have done their 
work, the present attitude of the world, voting 
for the restitution of freedom to Poland, is a 

1 Poland the Knight Among Nations. 

2 Talleyrand. 



72 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

clear manifestation of just such principles. 

In the last analysis there is justice in history 
and it is but natural that even Liebnecht, the 
German socialistic leader should assert: "Re- 
construct Poland, and you (Germany) shall have 
peace as far as Russia is concerned. Until you 
have done this, you cannot expect peace and se- 
curity," and that President Wilson should speak 
the inspiring words: "Statesmen^ everywhere 
are agreed that there should be a united, inde- 
pendent and autonomous Poland." 

^ Message to the Senate, January 22, 1917. 



Chapter IV. 
POLAND'S INTELLECTUAL RIGHT 

(ANCIENT). 

^^She — CracoiVy Poland — developed^ cultured 
and civilized long before the three headed dragon 
appeared^ and she was weary of waiting for her 
rather uncouth neighbors to catch up with her 
intellectually y socially and in almost all other 
arts of civilization — the politer artsJ' 

— Van Norman — Poland the Knight Among Na- 
tions, p. 54. 

^^Poland of the Seventeenth Century was the 
most civilized country in Europe/ 



» 



— Moltke — Account of Affairs and of the Social 
Conditions in Poland. 

The Poles have ever displayed qualities of an 
intellectual race, and this fact forms today one 
of the grounds on which they base their claim to 
freedom and self-government. Intellectually, the 
Poles are no less qualified to self-government 



74 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

than any other self-governing people. They had 
been a free and autonomous people for nine cen- 
turies. They acknowledged no foreign rule, and 
made their own laws. Their ability to self-govern 
had not been questioned prior to the Partitions. 
The Poles had ever cherished a republican gov- 
ernment which reached its highest expression in 
the Constitution of the Third of May, 1791. This 
constitution was an embodiment of their political 
efficiency. The leading statesmen of that time 
considered it the very perfection of political com- 
petency. The prominent English statesman Ed- 
mund Burke, proclaimed the Polish Constitution 
the best in Europe. 

Eepublicanism spells political advancement ; it 
denotes intellectual progress; it bespeaks a 
higher degree of civilization. A republican gov- 
ernment has ever betokened a higher intellectual 
plane of the people possessing it. A republic be- 
longs to the people. A republican people take an 
active interest in the government. This they can- 
not do without having reached a certain mark 
in intellectual progress. A republic supposes 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 75 



civilization. "As despotism," says Moltke,^ "is 
ttie only form of government for barbarians, so 
republicanism is the only form of government for 
people highly civilized, for it connotes activity of 
the people in the government and capability 
which follows education/' 

Poland was a republic when other nations were 
rigid monarchies. Poland had a relatively per- 
fect system of national representation which was 
in conformity with her advanced political devel- 
opment. Poland had a Senate and a House of 
Kepresentatives, as early as the latter part of 
the Fourteenth century. She had her minor diets 
where representatives were chosen. Already at 
that early period the Polish government presented 
the closest prototype of the American govern- 
ment. It were inconsistent to charge Poland 
with intellectual inability and admit her institu- 
tions which suppose high civilization. In the 
time of the Partitions Poland effected a political 
reform which astonished the world for its vigor- 
ous intellectuality. 

Poland has not only given birth to individuals 
such as won enviablo fame in every department 

1 Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions of Poland. 



76 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

of science, and have proven constructive builders 
of civilization, but even during the time of her 
Partitions, instituted the commission of educa- 
tion, the first of its kind in Europe. These were 
no ordinary marks by which Poland displayed 
her intellectual strength. The intellectual vitality 
of the Poles, however, is classically brought out 
in their life after the Partitions. To successfully 
resist such denationalization measures as the 
Poles have resisted chiefly through their spiritual 
and intellectual vigor, to create a literature such 
as they have created after the fall of their coun- 
try, and when the enemy had taken every measure 
to destroy them, to give birth, in their crucial 
hour, to the world's foremost geniuses of the age 
— was to show their intellectual vigor and their 
right to self-government — it was to display their 
vitality which shall ever keep them immune from 
destruction from without. 

Had Poland occupied the territory France, 
Spain or Southern German occupy, she would 
have contributed to the early civilization not less 
than did they. Poland, however, had the misfor- 
tune to be too far away from the center of civili- 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 11 

zation and too near the Eastern barbarians who 
made constant irruptions into Poland, and who 
naturally made the Poles devote their time to 
warfare rather than to intellectual pursuits. To- 
day's civilization is the ancient civilization of 
Greece and Rome, Christianized by the Church. 
Rome was its center. Naturally people who were 
nearer its center, or people over whom the Roman 
dominion had once extended and naturally left 
its imprint of higher civilization, received it 
sooner than those who were farther removed from 
it. Italy, Southern Germany, France and Spain 
were the first beneficiaries of that civilization 
which only at a later period was to embrace 
Poland, and still later, Northern Germany, Prus- 
sia and Lithuania. Poland was not only too far 
from the center of the Roman, but likewise the 
Byzantine, civilization which had never reached 
Poland. 

While other countries, then, had developed 
powerful organizations, while Germany produced 
the immortal personage Charlemagne, and was 
the fortunate recipient of the full benefit which 
resulted from the civilization he gave, Poland 



78 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

was still a country where legends were told and 
primitive civilization obtained. 

The open boundaries of Poland brought many 
a hurt and national misfortune to the Poles. 
Poland was left unprotected by nature. Her 
boundaries offered no natural barrier to hinder 
the enemy from invading and ravaging the coun- 
try. Poland's geographical situation was ex- 
tremely hurtful to her civilization. No other coun- 
try was so exposed to the Huns and the Tartars, 
the Turks and the Muscovites, as was Poland. 
Self-preservation was the all-important question 
of the Poles particularly from the ninth up to 
the sixteenth century. Education and learning 
which admirably developed at a later period, were 
for a long time constantly interfered with by the 
ceaseless incursions of the Asiatic hordes. It is 
known that Poland took no part in the Crusades 
as she had her crusades right at her Eastern 
door. She had to stay at home to keep back the 
barbarous East from invading the West, while 
Western Knighthood battled for the Holy Land. 
"Europe forgetful, heedless," says Michalet, "no 
more appears to know the supreme danger which 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 79 

threatened it in the last decades of the Middle 
Ages and from which it was saved." 

No justice can be done to the early intellectual 
progress of Poland without recalling her territo- 
rial position, which had been altogether ungenial 
to the cultivation of letters. Poland appeared late 
as a nation, and the Poles were too much taken up 
with defensive wars to have any great leisure to 
devote themselves to writing. "When Europe," 
says Michalet, "chattered idly, disputed over In- 
dulgences, lost itself in subleties, these heroic 
guardians were protecting it with lances. In 
order that the women of France and Germany 
might peacefully spin their distaff and their men 
study their theology, the Poles, keeping sentry, 
only a step from the barbarians, were on the 
watch, saber in hand. If perchance they fell 
asleep, their bodies would remain at the post, 
their heads would go to the Turkish camp." 
"Poland," says Marius Ary Leblong, "at all times 
had to be maintained in arms while others had 
plenty of leisure for development; through his- 
toric necessity she remained well after the Middle 
Ages a chivalrous nation of Knight-errants who 



80 Poland in the World of Democracy, 



SO valiantly kept watch in the face of Eastern 
anti-christian barbarians that she could, in a 
noble presumption, command the respect of 
Europe, as she guarded the individualism of her 
heroic warriors." To ward off the East from 
the West was Poland's principal mission, and she 
faithfully fulfilled it at the expense of her intel- 
lectual progress. When Dr. James J. Walsh in 
his "Thirteenth,^ Greatest of Centuries," says: 
"Casimir, besides giving laws to his people, also 
founded a university for them and in every way 
encouraged the development of such progress as 
would make his subjects intelligently realize their 
own rights and maintain them, apparently fore- 
seeing that thus the King would be better able 
to strengthen himself against the enemies that 
surrounded him in Central Europe," he outlined 
both the early intellectual endeavors of Poland, 
and the adverse circumstances under which that 
country labored from the very start. 

Still, Poland did her share. While England 
had her Oxford; while France astounded the 
world with her Paris, Poland already possessed 
her Cracow. "The Poles," says Van Norman,^ 

1 Chapter XXIII — Justice and Legal Developments. 

2 Poland the Knight Among Nations. 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 81 



"owe the career and great achievements of many 
of their foremost men to the venerable Jagiel- 
lonian University. One of its graduates, the 
most illustrious in half of a thousand years, be- 
longs to the world." "Poland has developed, cul- 
tured and civilized long before the three-headed 
dragon appeared, and she was weary of waiting 
for her rather uncouth neighbors to catch up 
with her intellectually, socially and in almost all 
the other arts of civilization — the politer arts," 
and finally: "It was the University of Cracow 
that meant to Central Europe what Paris meant 
to France and Oxford to England. At that time 
there were but a few universities in Europe, and 
it was the University of Cracow that ever since 
its foundation by Casimir the Great in 1364 
proved to be the main nursery of intellectual out- 
growth and inspiration in that part of Europe." 
In the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
centuries, despite her geographical drawbacks, 
Poland displays an intellectual progress that is 
relatively conspicuous. As far back as the 
Twelfth century, Poland possessed well regulated 



82 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



schools attached to her many churches and Ca- 
thedrals. Many of them became famous. They 
were generally maintained by the Church. At that 
period Poland fostered learning by establishing 
schools and founding the University. She gave 
birth, in the Thirtenth century, to men like Gallus 
and Martinus Polonus. They were the first rep- 
resentatives of the Polish literature, who rose to 
high prominence in the then world of letters. 
Martins Polonus' chronicle of the Popes and Em- 
perors, was considered a famous book, and was 
extensively printed three hundred years after it 
had been first published. A noted leterateur was 
Vincent Kadlubek, Bishop of Czarnkow and 
Archbishop of Gnesen, who won fame for his po- 
litical writings. Others became famous for their 
literary achievements, as Dlugosz, the celebrated 
historian and John Ostrorog, who achieved re- 
markable success in political science. Another 
was Zbigniew Olesnicki. He was a scholar by 
excellence. Versed in political science, he was 
a leading statesman. A master of literature, he 
raised the standard of Polish learning and left 
his influence upon the literature of Europe. He 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 83 

brought to Poland works of ancient authors, in- 
vited noted professors to the University and en- 
couraged education in a thitherto unprecedented 
way. 

The Sixteenth century was a century of scien- 
tific movements. It produced the greatest scien- 
tists. Nearly every leading nation claims one 
or few eminent scholars in that movement. Po- 
land did her best keeping abreast with every con- 
structive movement that was set on foot in 
Europe. While other countries laid claim to such 
men as Galileo, Kepler, Boyle and Newton, 
Poland produced her Copernicus, the astronomer 
by excellence. 

It was this noted astronomical reformer who 
definitely placed the earth among the solar plan- 
ets, and who by his celebrated work, "De Orbium 
Colestrium Revolutionibus," revolutionized the 
whole science of astronomy by building a new 
and solid foundation for modern astronomical 
studies upon which they firmly rest today. Co- 
pernicus was a native of Poland; Brudrzewski, 
his professor, and the University of Cracow, his 
Alma Mater. Copernicus was the most illus- 



84 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

trious, but not the only representative of math- 
ematics and astronomy in Poland at the epoch of 
the Humanities. Had Poland no other scholar 
but Copernicus, no other institution of learning 
than the University of Cracow, she would be en- 
titled to be counted with the intellectual nations 
in the world. Poland could well afford to discard 
all her scholars of the Sixteenth and every other 
century but Copernicus, and present him to the 
world as an exponent of her culture and learning. 
The Reformation produced in Poland, as in 
other countries, many noted ecclesiastical writers 

and controversialists. The best known among 
them were Wujek, the translator of the Bible 

into the Polish, Kromer and Hosius who became 
famous both for his work : "Confessions of Chris- 
tian Faith'' and because he was chosen to pre- 
side at the Council of Trent. At this time, too, 
flourished the great Polish Jesuit Skarga, the 
champion of Polish patriotism and literature. 

The Polish literature and civilization of the 
Sixteenth century, developed under a four-fold 
impetus. The political movement of the early 
development of the Polish democracy; the scien- 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 85 

tific movement; the Reformation, and, particu- 
larly, Humanism of which Poland became a virile 
and resourceful participant. The Nation of Mick- 
iewicz and Sienkiewicz kept abreast with other 
nations despite geographical disadvantages, along 
the line of intellectual progress. The suc- 
cess it achieved in the time of the humanistic 
movement bore evidence of an enlightened people, 
no less so than did similar success, the neigh- 
boring nations achieved, manifest their intelec- 
tual aptness. 

The University of Cracow had already for a 
length of time attracted students from foreign 
lands and possessed such noted theologians as 
John Kanty, Nicholas of Blonia, Boner, and such 
philosophers as John of Glogow ; lawyers, such as 
John Edogt, Benedict Hesse, and astronomers 
such as Adalbert of Brudzewo and Copernicus. 
But it was not until the age of the humanities 
that it rose to an international prominence. Pro- 
fessors from foreign countries considered it an 
honor to occupy seats at the Polish University, 
where thev found an untrammeled field for liter- 
ary activity. It appeared that the University 



86 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

developed a surplus educational prosperity, 
which it had to give an outlet to by disfussing it 
in minor schools and colleges. Secondary schools, 
each possessing a respectable faculty, were 
founded in large numbers. In many cases, com- 
petent professors from Cracow were assigned 
seats in the colleges and minor institutions of 
learning. 

Humanism found in Poland a fertile substra- 
tum of intellectuality and produced a rich 
literary progress. It tested the intellectual 
power of the Poles and found it resourceful and 
responsive. Budny and Krowiecki, Rey, the 
noted prosewriter, and Bielski, the master of di- 
dactic poems and satires are telling exponents 
of the litreary progress of the Poles at this time. 
In political science Cornecki, perhaps, became the 
most prominent. It was in the age of Humanities, 
too, that Poland boasted of her renowned Koch- 
anowski, only surpassed by Mickiewicz, whom the 
celebrated Goethe called "The Poet-Laureate of 
the world." This was the golden age of Poland's 
intellectual reassertion. It was when the intel- 
lectual renaissance held sway in Europe that 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Ancient). 87 

Poland merited her intellectual franchise which 
stood proof against the denationalization meas- 
ures that were enforced against her after the 
Partitions and which today justly demands the 
restoration of her right to self-government. 



Chapter V. 

POLAND'S INTELLECTUAL EIGHT 

(MODERN). 

^^What have the Poles ever done? It was a Polej 
NiJwlaus Copernicus who first taught that the 
sun was the center of the solar system^ and thus 
founded modern astronomy. It was John So- 
hiesJci^ another Pole, who defeated the Turks at 
Vienna^ and hy that victory stopped an invasion 
of the followers of Mohammed^ which threatened 
to overrun all Europe. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a 
native of Poland, enlisted with the American 
forces under Washington and proved one of his 
most effective helpers. He was given a vote of 
thanks hy Congress after the Revolutionary War 
was over and returned to his own troubled coun- 
try to help fight her battles. Other Poles in later 
years have likewise achieved distinction. Helen 
Modjeska^ the eminent tragedienne^ was of Polish 
birth; Henry ^ienkiewicz, the author of ^^Quo 
Vadis/^ is one of the same nationality as is Pader- 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 89 

ewskiy the eminent pianist and composer. Many 
other famous writers and musical composers, both 
old and modern, have been Polish by birth. The 
Poles really had something to boast of as well as 
the Anglo Baxon.'' 

— Nevin O. Winter — Poland of Today and 
Yesterday, p. 2. 

Russia, Prussia and Austria in their sorry at- 
tempt to justify their crime of dividing Poland, 
proclaimed to the world that Poland fell of her 
own weakness. The world might have been de- 
ceived by this Machiavelian lie, had not the 
phenomenal intelectual assertion of the Poles 
after the Partitions told a different story. After 
the dismemberment of their country, the Poles 
have shown an intellectual vigor to surprise the 
world. "In spite of the difficulties under which 
the Polish literature labors owing to a dismem- 
bered country, the amount of it that appears is 
very large. There are four active centers. Cra- 
cow, Lemberg, Warsaw and Posen. Many editions 
of old and most forgotten Polish authors, are be- 
ing issued under the patronage of the University 
of Cracow. A number of excellent reviews, fully 



90 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

up to the English and German standards, are 
issued."^ 

Van Norman^ presents the Polish intellectual 
life from another viewpoint. "In industry, in 
agriculture, in the arts and sciences, in education, 
in wealth and numbers, the Poles are progressing. 
It is impossible to kill a people that has a will to 
live. The commercial spirit has touched them and 
they have adapted themselves to it as one more 
weapon wherewith to preserve their sense of na- 
tional unity and improve their condition and 
prospects. A strong middle class is developing 
among them. Today, the young and well-educated 
generation of Poles have largely replaced Jews 
and Germans. Polish merchants, bankers, shop- 
keepers, mechanics, artisans, physicians, lawyers 
and engineers are now in the majority. In the 
words of a famous Polish historian : ^In 1800 we 
prayed to be allowed to live. In 1900 we know 
that we shall live'." 

Poland's division and apportionment among 
her neighbors was a historical event without an 

* Nevin O. Winter — Poland of Today and Yesterday, p. 137. 

* Poland the Knight Among Nations, p. 27. 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 91 

antecedent. It aroused a world-wide interest. 
Statesmen, historians and essayists spent much 
time and energy explaining the causes that led to 
so unique a historical event as was the downfall 
of Poland. What strikes one, however, is the 
fact that from no source came the accusation 
that Poland's fate was the result of an intellec- 
tual incompetency of the Poles regarding the 
administration of state. Those who tried to jus- 
tify the Partitions of Poland, would not forego 
quoting it in support of their contention. But 
they could not deny a fact the entire world knew 
of. They could not trace the downfall of Poland 
to intellectual stagnancy at a time when the Four 
Years' Diet framed the Constitution of the Third 
of May, 1791, when Poland achieved a political 
reform that has in relation to time and circum- 
stances never been achieved by any nation, when 
her constitution was awarded the full endorse- 
ment of the leading statesmen of the time for its 
high political genius and practicalness. Men like 
the Potockis, Adam Czartoryski, Malachowski 
and others, who framed the constitution of the 
Third of May, were recognized statesmen. They 



92 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

were classical exponents of Polish patriotism, 
statesmanship and education. 

Poland at the time of the Partitions was a 
true political body. Her subjects enjoyed legal 
and social equality. Then, no less than cen- 
turies before, Poland showed every evidence of 
an enviable culture, of strong literary and politi- 
cal efforts and of a deep conviction to patriotic 
duty. 

The strength of a nation is best gauged by the 
obstacles it overcomes in struggling for exist- 
ence. This is eminently true of the Polish nation 
which was given the severest test and found not 
wanting. Both during and after the Partitions 
Poland showed a steady intellectual progress, and 
in recent time, under the very torrent of anti- 
Polish measures, Poland has every reason to 
claim an intellectual standard that is on a par 
with that of any other people. Under the de- 
pression of the first Partitions, the Poles made 
the noblest attempt at a radical reform. They 
soon instituted the commission of education, 
which had its distinction of being the first of its 
kind in Europe. The government took edut^ation 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 93 

into its hands. This, too, was an advanced meas- 
ure, as it was only later that other countries 
copied it from Poland. The commission was 
headed by such men as Poniatowski, Czartoryski, 
Zamojski and Potocki. Some of them became 
later the authors of the Polish Constitution. It 
created wholesome influence on education not 
only in Poland, but in Europe at large. It es- 
tablished a public school system, and thanks to 
its untiring activity, the Universities of Cracow, 
Wilna and others were given that educational 
impetus that justly gained for them the merit 
of true centers of learning. High schools sprung 
up in the larger towns and elementary schools 
were built in large numbers. The military 
schools at Warsaw became renowned. The Com- 
mission prepared the Polish mind for the framing 
of the Constitution of the Third of May, which 
to this day remains a monument to Polish states- 
manship. Even in peaceful time, the commission 
of education would constitute the finest example 
of the intellectual vigor of the Poles. But it must 
be remembered that they found themselves equal 
of its establishment in the very turmoil of politi- 



94 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

cal disquiet, and all the intriguery the Prussian 
and Eussian autocrats were capable of. 

With the consummation of the Third Partition, 
Poland ceased to exist as a political entity. Yet 
it was after the Partitions that the Polish nation 
produced a marvelous growth of literature, as- 
serting thereby to the world that it had not 
ceased to be a nation. It clearly demonstrated 
that intellectual deficiency could never be laid to 
the Poles as a cause that contributed to their 
downfall. It rather showed that in due time it 
would prove an irrefutable argument in favor of 
the restoration of their freedom and their right 
to self-government. The intellectual reassertion 
of the Poles after they had been reduced to politi- 
cal slavery was not short-lived, or such as de- 
notes a spontaneous outburst, and subsides after 
a time. It had continued in the face of the most 
repressive anti-Polish measures, as a stigma to 
the usurper and a protest against the unreason- 
ableness of the Polish subjection. 

The Poles clearly realized the power of educa- 
tion as an offset to national annihilation. The 
commission of education did laudable work. The 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 95 

reformation of schools, starting from the Acad- 
emy of Cracow down to the last elementary village 
school, wrought a constructive influence upon the 
literary activity of the Poles at this time. The 
political reform produced learned volumes of po- 
litical discussion. This was an ill-boding period 
in the political life of Poland, but an encourag- 
ing period in her literature. Poland had reached 
a golden period of intellectual progress rather 
than stood at the brink of a political crisis. A 
nation which is able to produce the very flower 
of poets and writers, under such political condi- 
tions as were those of Poland under foreign rule, 
can hardly be charged with intellectual deficiency. 
The institution of the Society of Friends of learn- 
ing in Warsaw; the opening of the new univer- 
sity of Warsaw, the University of Lwow, the Vol- 
hynian Lyceum and numerous minor institutions 
of learning were some of the sources that dis- 
seminated knowledge in Poland shortly after the 
Partitions. Many of them became famous and 
their influence is felt to this day. They were 
represented by such men as Niemcewicz, a friend 
of Kosciuszko and a sojourner in America for 



96 Poland in the World of Democracy. ; 

many years, and known for his success in imitat- ■ 
ing Scott and Byron; Morawski, who translated I 
Byron; Kozmian, Linde and Mickiewicz, the i 
greatest Polish poet, Lelewel, who achieved not- 
able fame as historian. j 

Poland became a vigorous participant in the I 
Romantic movement that appeared in Europe 
shortly after the Partitions. Mickiewicz was the I 
chief exponent of the Polish Romanticism. From | 
his time on the Polish literature struck a purely i 
national key. At this time, Poland apparently \ 
developed a surplus literary energy and gave birth i 
to her three great poets: Mickiewicz, Slowacki 
and Krasinski. They were not ordinary talents, i 
but literary geniuses with international repute. ; 
They were noble and rare exponents of Polish | 
culture. Mickiewicz especially, who is not un- \ 
fitly called the Polish Goethe, deserves special ] 
comment. His celebrated sonnets and his Wal- i 
lenrod, exhibit the unusual versatility of mind j 
which characterizes this the greatest Polish poet. \ 
His "Pan Tadeusz,'' a national epic, is a recog- j 
nized masterpiece. The chair he held at the Uni- 
versity of Paris brought enviable credit to the | 
Polish culture. J 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 97 

The Polish literature reached the height of 
perfection even while the country suffered the 
most abject slavery. Kome produced the flower 
of her literature while in political prosperity. 
Spain and England gave birth to their greatest 
literature while their political conditions were 
at their best. But Poland gave utterance to her 
great Komantic song in the turmoil of political 
adversity. The age of the Romantic movement 
in Poland needs not feel ashamed at the age of 
the Humanities. The Polish literature and the 
Polish intellectual development has made a tre- 
mendous headway for the last century and more. 
What appeared to be insurmountable difficul- 
ties the enemy endeavored to place in its way, 
have failed to arrest its growth. A chance re- 
view of the Polish philosophy, poetry, music and 
art, in recent years, bring to mind such names 
as Ignace J. Paderewski, Henry Sienkiewicz, 
Helen Mojeska, Sembrich-Kochanska, Curie-Sklo- 
dowska, the first woman to occupy a chair at the 
Sorbonne ; Wyspianski, Kasprowicz, Konopnicka, 
B. Prus, Reymont, Lutoslawski, A. Brueckner, 
Fathers Pawlicki and Morawski, Askenazy, 



98 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Struve, Libelt, Trentkowski, Lelewel, Klaczko, 
Korzon, Golochowski and Badeni. Fr. Pawlicki's 
"History of Greek Literature" is considered a 
classic of an eminent type. Odyniec won a name 
for his translations of Scott, Moore and Byron. 
Kasprowicz was a noted Shakespearean trans- 
lator. 

Every literature has a note of national indi- 
viduality and the Polish literature of the Post- 
Partitional period possesses a character which 
is vainly sought in any other literature. It is 
the note of spirituality, or idealism, which is 
peculiar especially to the Polish poetry of this 
time. After the Partitions the Poles lived an 
ideal existence, which depended on her poets to 
a degree unprecedented in any history save that 
of the ancient Greece. The Polish poets taught 
the people their history, aims and ideals that 
could be learned in no other way under the iron 
rule of the usurpers. The Poles have never 
parted with the idea that they have ceased to be 
a nation. They have considered the period after 
the partition as a mere suspense in their political 
life. They remained firm in their belief that it 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 99 



would not be long before they regain their free- 
dom and independence. For this kind of political 
philosophy the Polish poets are principally to 
be thanked. They inspired the nation with new 
courage and perseverance. They instilled into 
the people their sacred right of being and self- 
explicitation. They endeavored to explain the 
working of Providence. They strove to prepare 
the nation to pass bravely their Via Dolorosa. 
They taught that the Poles had yet a mission to 
perform, and that Providence tried them in prepa- 
ration to its fulfillment. 

"Great as is the literature of Poland from an 
artistic point of view, it stands on another place 
than that of literary value alone. In the first 
half of the Nineteenth century, the Polish poets 
rose as the national teachers and moral leaders. 
They spoke to the people held in bondage by the 
bitterest facts of life, of the hope that would save 
them. The youths of Poland were prohibited from 
learning their nation's history, her spirit, her 
aims in the ordinary channels. They learnt them, 
therefore, of the poets who taught them the 
lessons of devotion and self-immolation for a na- 



100 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

tive country; whose writings kept alive the fires 
of patriotism, the Polish ideality and moral 
health, in young souls beset by peril. The na- 
tional literature was no mere art, an element 
disconnected with the deep things of life, written 
for recreation or relaxation. It spoke straight to 
a stern purpose. It was a weapon, and as power- 
ful a weapon as any that she could have chosen, 
in the cause of Poland. In this light the Polish 
poets regarded the poetry they gave their people. 
The literature they brought forth is, said Mickie- 
wicz, speaking in the College of France, ^above 
all things true. Each work is at the same time 
an action.^' " "Poland's poets were more than 
her poets. They were her patriots."^ It was, 
then, to give the nation spiritual nourishment 
which would tend to compensate for the loss of 
their political independence that this kind of 
poetry was created. It may have been too ideal- 
istic and of little use to the actual restoration of 
freedom to Poland. But it manifested the versa- 
tility of the Polish mind, the depth of the Polish 

1 Adam Mickiewicz Les Slaves. 
^ Monica M. Gardner — Poland, p. 32. 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 101 

soul, and the strength of the Polish hope — it 
showed the native intellectuality of the Polish 
race. "This period of the Polish nation rent with 
struggle as regards her political nation brought 
forth not only Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest 
of Polish poets, but so noble a band of singers 
inspired by sorrow, as to be justly reckoned the 
Golden Age of Poland's literature'^ ; and "Mesya- 
ism inspired the Polish nation with a literature 
which for artistic beauty, passionate religious 
feeling and deep pathetic power ranks with the 
finest production of European letters."^ 

In more recent years, the Main School and the 
"Macierz" the Poles under Kussia founded, shows 
how anxious they were to seize every opportunity 
to acquire education. The Main School did not 
exist long, as the Russian government took care 
to suppress it very early. 

In 1905, during the short spell of freedom Rus- 
sia allowed the Poles, the latter set on foot a 
sweeping educational movement under the aus- 
pices of the "Polish Macierz." It existed only 
two years when the Russian government sup- 

* Monica M. Gardner — American Catholic Quarterly Review, 
Vol. XXXI, No. 121. 



102 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

pressed it. The extent and the ability with which 
it was managed are evident from the result it 
attained in that short space of time. According 
to Eussian reports, the committees that worked 
in the interest of the Macierz, reached the num- 
ber of more than 700. They had a membership 
of 12,000. Polish schools under the Macierz num- 
bered 630,000 Polish children. But, unfortunately, 
the Prussian influence in the court of the Czars, 
which has been brought to light during the war, 
prevailed upon the dupish Eussian government 
to put a stop to its noble work. 

What would Poland's contribution to know- 
ledge be, under normal conditions, can be appre- 
ciated from the way the Polish mind expressed 
itself in Poland under Austria. With their 
schools practically suppressed under Eussia, and 
with the ban the German government put on the 
use of the Polish in schools and assemblies, Cra- 
cow and Lemberg, under the more lenient Aus- 
trian rule, became the main centers of the Polish 
literary activity. There the Polish intellectual 
life came compellingly to the fore in all its phases 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 103 

Popular education was advanced under the aus- 
pices of the universities. Scientific research 
resulted in the contribution of many volumes of 
useful and practical knowledge, while the literary 
and artistic life developed in a way to compel 
the favorable attention of the world. Polish 
schools in Galicia, free from the ban of the 
Prussian and Eussian type, turned out fruitful 
sources to supply the fund of human knowledge. 
Works of old masters and standard Keviews were 
edited with the best results. Book-shelves in the 
public libraries became heavy with books by Pol- 
ish authors. 

The Polish administration of Galicia and the 
access Poles had to governmental positions in the 
Austrian Empire, gave them a chance to exercise 
their political skill as they were not able to do 
in Russia and Germany, where they had every 
official position closed against them. Such men 
as Goluchowski and Badeni rose to the highest 
positions in the Imperial cabinet, while Duna- 
jewski reorganized the finances of the Austrian 
Empire. 



104 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

The Poles carried, along with their traditions, 
the intellectual aptness that characterized their 
forefathers. Wherever they would settle, their 
intellectual life would soon create an impression. 
This is especially true of the Poles in America, 
both because here they settled in large numbers, 
and because they found Free America an unham- 
pered field for self-expression. The Poles came 
to America comparatively late. America was well 
colonized by people of other nationalities when 
the Poles, persecuted in their country, resolved 
on seeking the shores of the Free Country. It 
was not long, however, before they won a literary 
distinction, that is, relatively, on a par with that 
of those nationalities that started to colonize the 
country. American writers of note have been 
generous in giving endorsement to the intellec- 
tual accomplishment of the Poles in this country. 

Poles in America are proud to mention such 
of their countrymen as Julian Boeck, a noted 
educator, who laid plans for the first polytechnic 
institution in the United States. He won dis- 
tinction in many other ways, and was honored 
by President Grant with an educational commis- 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 105 

sion. Zalinski distinguished himself during the 
Civil War and is the inventor of the pneumatic 
torpedo gun. Dr. H. Kulosowski, who also served 
in the Civil War and made an enviable name, 
filled many important positions. They possess 
such institutions of learning as the Seminary in 
Detroit; St. Stanislaus College in Chicago; St. 
John's College in Philadelphia ; Colleges at Erie, 
Pa. ; at Cambridge Springs, Mass. ; Pulaski, Wis., 
and Kitchener, Canada. 

Poland today possesses schools and universities 
that rank with any school and university in the 
world. The University of Cracow needs no com- 
ment; the Polish Academy of science in Cracow 
stands pre-eminent in lettered Europe. It is a 
scientific body of the highest standard. The John 
Casimir University of Lemberg forms in conjunc- 
tion with the University of Cracow the main 
spring of Polish intellectual activity, while the 
remaining institutions of learning in what for- 
merly constituted the Kingdom of Poland such 
as the Theological Seminaries in Posen, the Uni- 
versity of Warsaw and the thickly dispersed 
colleges in Galicia bid fair to become the educa- 



106 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



tional standard of the Polish. Poland of today 
has individuals to represent her culture who are 
geniuses with international repute. Modjeska is 
still fresh in the mind of the world and especially 
in that of America. In philosophy the Poles are 
proud to mention Lutoslawski, the greatest living 
commentator on Platonic philosophy. In science, 
the discoverers of radium, Mde. Curie-Sklodow- 
ska; in literature, Henry Sienkiewicz; in music, 
Paderewski. It is such exponents that the Polish 
culture possesses today and they are in keeping 
with what leading writers of the day have to say 
of the Poles. They call them "One of the most 
cultured and most active races possessing a liter- 
ature and civilization superior to that of their 
neighbors — Prussians, Austrians and Russians." 
"The Polish race, to those who are acquainted 
with it, is the subtlest and most delicate and one 
of the noblest and most heroic races of Europe." 
"This marvelous people (The Polish) are the most 
intellectually gifted in the world, and have pro- 
duced the sweetest music, the best musicians, the 
finest artists and writers. They are the most 
imaginative and cultured race in Europe." 



Poland's Intellectual Right (Modern). 107 

Poland, then, despite her ungenial geographical 
situation and blightful political conditions she 
suffered since the time she appeared among the 
family of nations, left all along indelible traces 
of intellectual progress. She left them before 
the University of Cracow rose to prominence. 
She left them particularly in the Fifteenth and 
Sixteenth centuries, when Poland was called the 
most civilized country in Europe.^ The Poles 
could perhaps produce no stronger proof to show 
that they have not ceased to be a nation one and 
undivided, than their inherent intellectual vital- 
ity, which has kept, and ever shall keep, them 
immune from assimilation. 

The intellectual competency of the Polish race 
has always constituted a strong protest against 
its subjection to foreign rule. It admittedly 
proved an unsolvable problem to the usurpers 
who swore to denationalize their Polish subjects. 
The usurper cannot but feel that Poland is enter- 
ing upon a new career; that she is rising from her 

^Moltke — Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions 
in Poland. 



108 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



long, forced sleep; that she is still youthful — 
buoyant and full of aspirations; that her voice 
may no longer be safely disregarded, now when 
the whole world is arraigned against that autoc- 
racy which tried to extinguish Poland with no 
less scruples than it violated the rights of the 
Belgians and of the Americans, and when three- 
fourths of the world rallied to the oppressed na- 
tions. In a time as the present, the intellectual 
traditions of the thirty million Poles, together 
with their historical rights and recognized politi- 
cal competency, surely present, at the court of 
nations, the strongest plea for a speedy restora- 
tion of their freedom and independence. 



Chapter VI. 

POLAND'S POLITICAL RIGHT. 

^^There is no political doctrine more false or 
more pernicious than that which represents vices 
in internal government as an extenuation of un- 
just oppression against a country and a consola- 
tion to mankind for the destruction of its inde- 
pendence: 



y> 



— Sir James Mackintosh — An Account of the 
Partitions of Poland — Edinburg Eeview, 
Vol. XXXVII. 

The Partition of Poland was admittedly a 
unique historical event, equally as were the causes 
that led to her dismemberment, and the reasons 
the usurpers advanced in apology for crushing 
her. They claimed that the Poles were not able 
to govern — that they wrangled continuously, 
fought among themselves to an extent that they 
threatened their own welfare and the welfare 
of the neighboring states. Strange, but the polit- 
ical philosophy of that time made it possible for 



110 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



the partitioners to advance this mocking apology 
and to win adherents to their cause. 

Are the Poles not able to self-govern? Is there 
anything in their history to show that they are 
not? There is nothing peculiar to other nations 
to designate them as competent of self-govern- 
ment, but which the Poles do not possess. If a 
periodical lack of political unity should be con- 
strued as marking the people unable to govern, 
what should parallel conditions elsewhere denote? 
If there were divisions in the Polish government, 
there were likewise divisions in other govern- 
ments. If there were serious negative qualities 
found at times among the ruling classes in 
Poland, they were found in equal measure among 
the ruling bodies in other countries. Everything 
that was condemned in former Poland was found 
in like or even greater measure elsewhere. Poland 
had an eminent history of ten centuries. From 
the very beginning, she was an eager par- 
ticipant in every field of progress. Poland 
was a republican state in the midst of 
monarchism, the continuator of the Repub- 
lics of Ancient Greece and Rome and 



Poland's Political Right. Ill 

a prototype of the American government. Poland 
astonished the world with her phenomenal 
strength in coping with the enemy, in reforming 
her government, in establishing a school system 
that had no antecedent, and in framing a Consti- 
tution which could never have emanated from a 
people incapable of self-government. Not until 
it has been established the qualities like these 
denote the absence rather than the presence of 
governmental competency, could it be believed 
that the Polish are not able to govern. 

Poland was a republic, and a Republican gov- 
ernment is the highest form of government. "Re- 
publicanism" in the words of Brownson^ "is really 
civilization as opposed to barbarism and all civil- 
ity in the real sense of the word"; and, "every 
people that has a fully developed state or policy 
is a republican people." When a people is not 
ready to establish a republican government, it 
means that it has not as yet attained to that 
political accomplishment which designates a 
people in every sense able to self-govern. 

We are naturally opposed to the rigid mon- 
archism of the Middle Ages. We did not like to 

' Politics, IV, Vol. 18, p. 22. 



112 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

see the Czar of Russia hold absolute power, while 
his subjects were denied any share in the govern- 
ment. The Russians were considered behind time 
in political progress. But such nations as found 
themselves ready to establish a republican form 
of government, were not belated in political 
ideals, and certainly not incapable of self-govern- 
ment. No one would deny governmental com- 
petency to America, which is the greatest of mod- 
ern republics. Just for that reason, it were per- 
haps illogical to deny ability to govern self to 
Poland, which was a great republic already in 
medieval times. While monarchism prevailed 
throughout Europe, Poland was designated by 
the then singular name: RES PUBLICA, and 
while despotism reigned elsewhere, in Poland 
freedom and toleration were extended to all. 
Poland was with England the very continuator 
of the Greecian and Roman republics. The coun- 
try of Sobieski was a beacon of republicanism in 
the very midst of most rigid monarchism. Poland 
had ever been a teacher of those broad democratic 
ideals which consult the dignity of men and, for 
the full realization of which, America has entered 



Poland's Political Right, 113 

the world war. Her progressive political ideals 
gave birth to the early attempt at representative 
government, founded on the principle that the 
right to govern rests primarily with the 
people, and on the consequent recognition that 
the people are entitled to a voice in the govern- 
ment. For the freedom and religious tolerance 
she extended to all within her bounds; and for 
the full autonomy she allowed them, Poland has 
been called a United States of the Middle Ages, 
a political prototype of America. This would 
be a fair tribute paid to the governmental ability 
of any nation, and Poland claims it as peculiarly 
hers. 

Two strong reasons Poland urges in favor of 
her competency of self-government, are her polit- 
ical independence which lasted for ten centuries, 
and the progress she achieved in jurisprudence. 

On the supposition that the Poles are incapable 
of self-government it were pretty hard to ac- 
count for the intellectual and political progress 
they made. Government is the form of society — 
the principle that informs the nation. Poland's 



114 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



activity had a wide political bearing. Under 
Chrobry the Great, who is styled the Polish 
Charlemagne, Poland grew territorially, and ex- 
hibited an unusual activity in literature, politics 
and war. Already under Chroby the Great, Po- 
land ruled over different races. None brought 
against her a protest against oppression. Poland 
could not accomplish this without being able to 
self govern. During the reign of Chrobry, Poland 
stood on a par with other nations in jurispru- 
dence. She had her university just as other lead- 
ing nations had theirs. The way the Poles then 
solidified their kingdom could even today serve 
an object lesson to other nations. She had then 
the best organized army in Europe. During her 
political existence, "From the reign of Chrobry 
the Great to the Crime of 1772," to quote Par- 
sons,^ "the Chivalry of Poland rejected ninety- 
two Tartar invasions any of which, if successful, 
would have at least jeopardized the existence of 
European civilization." Poland could not, just 
as no other country could, have accomplished 
this without being able to govern. It was not 

* History of the Polish Catholicity and the Russian 
"Orthodoxy," Vol. V, p. 74. 



PoLANi/s Political Right. 115 

without reason that Poland became to be known 
the greatest commonwealth of the Middle Ages. 
To her belonged Lithuania, Euthenia and other 
minor nations. These enjoyed a full autonomy, 
and the Polish government respected their relig- 
ion, language and customs. Poland did not in- 
terfere with such matters of their governments 
as were safeguarded by their autonomy. All 
peoples within the Polish boundaries enjoyed 
freedom and were allowed to develop within their 
own national genuis. It could scarcely be said 
that the Powers which partitioned Poland are bet- 
ter equipped for self-government, because they 
konw how to proscribe her language and her relig- 
ion, and, contrary to the laws of God and human- 
ity, to strive to subdue and blot out every vestige 
of her national rights. 

Poland's territory extended from the Baltic 
to the Black sea, and from the Oder to where the 
Russian frost begins to chill. Poland could not 
have held the territory integral for centuries 
had she been devoid of the ability to govern. 

The Thirteenth Century witnessed a rare de- 
velopment of jurisprudence. In this century, the 



116 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Magna Charta was drawn up, which was destined 
to constitute the basic law for the English speak- 
ing countries. In Germany, Frederick II was 
the first to publish laws in the German. In 
France, the Institutes of St. Louis were promul- 
gated. Poland was not behind time in the legal 
propaganda of the age. Chrobry the Great, whom 
historians justly liken to Charlemagne for his 
pre-eminence as a warrior, administrator and leg- 
islator, won his epithet, "The Great," in a large 
measure for his wise and practical legal 
enactments. 

To quote Dr. James J. Walsh^ : "Casimir the 
Great, who was born shortly after the close of the 
Thirteenth century, gave wise laws to Poland, 
which have constituted the basis of Polish law 
ever since. * * * At this time Poland was 
one of the most important countries in Europe." 

We are more surprised at Poland's early democ- 
racy than able to go into its causes. Why should 
Poland, while in Bohemia, Hungary, Sweden and 

Denmark, in fact in all the European countries, 
the kings wrested all elective franchise from the 

*The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries, p. 369. 



Poland's Political Right. 117 



people, allow her people to hold the elective vote? 
Why should Poland lead in political ideals and 
still be charged with inability to self -govern? 
Why should Poland, whilst rigid monarchism 
and feudalism reigned supreme elsewhere in 
Europe, have realized the popular government? 
Was it because she was unable to govern? Be- 
cause the Poles "did not know how to govern 
themselves?'' Why should Poland have realized 
even at that period, totally antagonistic to repub- 
lican ideals, the principle to which the Great 
Fathers of the American Constitution later gave 
concrete expression when they said: "We hold 
these truths to be self-evident that all men are 
created equal — that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that 
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness." Why should Poland dare a republi- 
can government, surrounded, on all sides, by 
despotic and bureaucratic kingdoms? Why 
should Poland's Constitution of the Third of May 
be the oldest written constitution in Europe? 
Not because the Poles were incapable, but be- 
cause they were and necessarily are, capable of 
self-government. 



118 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

The king of Poland, elected by the majority of 
voters, occupied the same position to the govern- 
ment, as the President of the United States occu- 
pies to our government. If America acted on 
the principle: No taxation without representa- 
tion, Poland put the same principle into practiee 
already in the Fourteenth century. If America, 
in conformity with the principles of her govern- 
ment by the consent of the governed, is electing 
her president, Poland freely elected her kings 
ages before the first Americans drew up the Amer- 
ican Constitution. If America possesses a Senate 
and a House of Commons, Poland had them cen- 
turies before. If America generously receives 
within her shores all peoples, Poland had ever 
been a veritable asylum to all the oppressed. If 
America allows religious toleration, this in 
Poland was an outstanding feature. These and 
other features of the two countries are striking.ly 
alike. Poland elected her kings ever since 1370 
after the demise of Casimir the Great. Even at 
this early period, the Poles did not recognize the 
immediate right of kings, but, justly insisting 
that this power primarily resides in the people, 



Poland's Political Right. 119 



elected their rulers. The Poles chose for 
their king one who was capable of executing the 
kingly office. At the same time the custom pre- 
vailed among their neighboring nations to recog- 
nize the "immediate right'' of the rulers, and, as a 
consequence, they often became subject to the rule 
of one who lacked the essential qualifications of 
a ruler, and who was better fitted to perform the 
menial service of a king than to execute the 
kingly office. 

If today a republican form of government is 
synonymous with governmental competency 
of a people, and rigid monarchism or despotism 
denotes political dormancy, and if a republic 
means today, as it had ever meant, political 
progress and despotism its lack, it is hard to un- 
derstand how the republican Poles can consist- 
ently be charged with inability to self -govern. 



Chapter VII. 
POLAND MAKES WORLD SAFE FOR DE- 
MOCRACY. 

^^In all other states of Europe^ sovereign power 
had not ceased to he on the increase. The Eu- 
ropean nations y scarcely delivered from feudal 
tyranny, began everywhere to fear falling under 
the yoke of a single master. At this epoch, in 
the year 1573, the Poles alone, through the death 
of their king and the vacancy of the throne re- 
covered all their rights. They alone, in the entire 
Europe, without disturbance, without bloodshed 
and through tranquil deliberations, reformed the 
form of government to their liking. .... 
Poland, whose constitution never allowed her to 
be a conqueror, owed only to this tolerance her 
growth and the annexation of all the neighboring 
countries.'^ — Rulhiere — History of the Anarchy 
of Poland. 

The three-fourths of the world, which united in 
their struggle for Democracy, will gladly recall 



Poland and Democracy. 121 



that Poland started to "make the world safe for 
Democracy," back in the fourteenth century, and 
that, naturally, her cause had, for so many cen- 
turies, been the cause of the Allies today. It is 
interesting to recall today, that the Poles cen- 
turies ago, had "a government by the consent of 
the governed,'' and that they let every people 
"free to determine its own policy, its own way to 
development, unhindred, unthreatened, unafraid, 
the little along with the great and the powerful." 
The government was of that broad and demo- 
cratic nature which emanates from a liberty and 
equality loving people. Already in the fourteenth 
century, Poland had a Senate and the House of 
Delegates, or the "Upper" and the "Lower 
House." Here sat dignitaries of the Church, Pata- 
tines and Castellans, in all 136 Senators. The 
Lower House contained delegates and represen- 
tatives from all the parts of the country. For 
centuries before her partition, Poland adminis- 
tered the affairs of her State on the pric-riples 
of Democracy. Judson C. Williver^ draws a 
vivid picture of the Polish Democracy when he 
says: "The Pacta Coventa or Contract between 

* Poland's Story — Century Magazine, May, 1915. 



122 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

nobles and the king, deprived the king of almost 
all real power, save when in war he headed the 
army. The Pacta Coventa at its full develop- 
ment must strike the twentieth century reader as 
rather a charter of liberties than an apple of dis- 
cord. The king was elective; only the parlia- 
ment could make war, impose taxes or commis- 
sion ambassadors; parliament must be convened 
at least biennially; the king's cabinet was to be 
elected by the Diet once a year." 

The Confederation of Lithuania and Ruthenia 
with Poland is another example of Polish De- 
mocracy, and classically brings out President 
Wilson's idea of how a nation should not seek to 
extend its own policy over any other nation or 
people. The two countries constituted with Po- 
land the first voluntary alliance of three inde- 
pendent states in Europe, and were really a 
United States in Poland. They were gov- 
erned by the "Crown,'' or by Poland. Each, 
however, possessed the fullest local and linguistic 
autonomy. They had their laws, their repre- 
sentatives, their own government, though, in cer- 



Poland and Democracy, 123 

tain matters, they were governed by the Consti- 
tution of Poland. Poland paid deference to their 
religion, language, their customs and traditions, 
and respected their dignity as a separate people. 
The Polish national conception has never been 
imbued with a narrow-minded nationalism. There 
was no discrimination among the various na- 
tionalities within the Polish Commonwealth. 
There was no political preferment, no exclusion 
from offices of given nationalities. A Pole, a 
Lithuanian and Kuthenian were beneficiaries of 
the vast political community called the Polish 
Republic. The idea of nationality was with the 
Poles broad enough to cover ethical and religious 
differences. The Polish patriotism was anolo- 
gous to the American one. "Luthuania, my coun- 
try," thus begins his celebrated poem, Mickiewicz, 
Lithuanian birth, like so many other eminent 
Poles. By race a Euthenian, by nationality a 
Pole, called themselves the Ruthenians, who 
claimed Poland as their country and who felt 
Polish. 



124 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Poland's Democracy entered every phase of 
the Polish life, and exerted the most wholesome 
influence upon her political and religious tolera- 
tion and the sense of equality, which was pre- 
eminently peculiar to the Poles. The Poles loved 
to be equal and free. They loved to be tolerant 
to creed and nationality. The^^ invariably acted 
on the belief that every one should be allowed to 
speak the language he learned from his mother, 
profess the religion he was taught and follow 
out the traditions he learned to love. *'The Poles," 
says Moltke^ "were tolerant. They took no part 
in religious wars that devastated Europe in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Calvanists, 
Lutherans, Greeks long lived peacefully in their 
midst, and Poland for a long time was justly 
called the promised land of the Jews. The Poles 
actually forced their king to swear that they 
would tolerate all sects." Their notion of equality 
Moltke thus brings out : "The intercourse of the 
nobles was cordial and excessive deference was 
shown to rich and powerful. The dealing of the 
nobles with each other bore the stamp of their 

* Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions in Poland. 



Poland and Democracy. 125 

original equality. Their form of address which 
still survives, was "brother" .... The 
peasant did not belong to the lord; he could not 
be sold. The estate might pass into other hands, 
but the peasant was not obliged to leave his farm. 
The peasant was well off, he could raise money 
on his property and had regular tribunals. He 
enjoyed the possession of house and land. The 
Polish peasant enjoyed these privileges at a time 
when villanage existed in all the rest of Europe." 

The Polish Constitution, which regarded per- 
fect equality of the rights of all the citizens of the 
State, had its origin in the democratic bent, pe- 
culiar to the Poles. In Poland, government was 
co-extensive with citizenship. As early as 1430, 
Poland set up a law guaranteeing personal im- 
munity — "Neminem captivabimus nise jure vic- 
tum," more than two centuries before England in- 
stituted her famous "Habeas Corpus." Poland did 
not know the aristocracy which obtained in other 
countries, and when historians naively assert that 
too excessive aristocracy contributed to Poland's 
downfall, they either compare the nobility of 
Poland to the aristocracy elsewhere, or errone- 



126 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ously speak of it as an oligarchical body. The 
fact is that the Polish nobles were essentially a 
voting body, enjoying perfect equality among 
themselves. They were eminently a political 
body. They were a development of the early de- 
fenders of their country against the onslaughts 
of the East. The position they occupied in that 
early home of republicanism corresponds to the 
position of the voters of the United States. 

Had her political existence not been interfered 
with, it is not unlikely that a modern Poland 
would present the world with the most finished 
type of a democratic government. So high was 
the regard for freedom in Poland that political 
exiles, who once had reached the Polish territory, 
were by that very fact free. Such deference did 
the Poles pay to the dignity of people within her 
territory, that not one had brought forth a com- 
plaint against their mother country. And right 
here it must be remembered that Poland was a 
democracy at a time when the rest of European 
nations was rigidly monarchical, and, naturally, 
was left to her own intiative. She had nothing 
to copy from other governments, assimilate it. 



Poland and Democracy, 127 

make it her own and improve it. Eather the fact 
that she was a democratic government, sur- 
rounded and pressed in by despotic kingdoms, 
impeded her progress, and vastly contributed in 
the end to her political downfall. 

"The brightest page in the history of Poland's 
government is the liberty of the press. This un- 
fortunate country is justly entitled to the credit 
of establishing the first free press known in the 
records of nations. Although envy has fre- 
quently tried to filch this brightest jewel from 
her crown, yet to Poland, and to Poland alone, 
is the world indebted for the discovery of that 
most important principle in all sound govern- 
ment, the freedom of the press. The American 
government borrowed this institution from Po- 
land, and adopted it in its improved form as a 
corner-stone of the American Union. This most 
valuable of all political institutions, when con- 
templated in its various points of usefulness, is 
sufficient to immortalize Poland in the heart of 
every freeman. When all Europe had either 
silenced or shackled the press — even England not 
excepted — for the purpose of defeating the Re- 



128 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



formation, and crushing religious and civil lib- 
erty in its bud, the persecuted followers of the 
great reformer found a secure retreat in the 
plains of Sarmatia, where all enjoyed freedom 
of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of 
press, of literature, government, and law, all 
published their doctrines freely, and sent forth 
their tracts, treatises, translations, and reform 
publications, which were the principal means of 
spreading the great work of human improvement 
throughout Europe and America."^ 

Poland's political toleration was the measure 
of her religious freedom. Happily uniting po- 
litical affairs with religious, till her constitution 
presented a spectacle of a fusion of political 
science with religion, and ever mindful of the 
dignity of the individual subject, democratic 
Poland was the most tolerant country as regards 
religious worship. A chivalrous and courteous 
nation, Poland was an asylum at all time to the 
unfortunate; never did a Polish King persecute 
any faith. Protestantism lived freely in the 

* Fletcher, p. 58, quoted by L. C. Saxton in: The Fall of 
Poland, p. 385. 



Poland and Democracy. 129 

country. The Poles were the first Christian peo- 
ple to treat the Jews as brothers and not as dogs. 

Religious and political toleration has ever been 
founded with people, who are politically advanced, 
and found missing with those, who labor under 
barbarism. It recognizes the dignity of the indi- 
vidual and the dignity of the nation. A govern- 
ment which tolerates religious and national bents 
of people under its dominion, governs better than 
the one that dominates them with an iron fist, 
paying no regard to their ideals and aspirations. 
Here not the good of the state, but the good of 
the people through the state is the end of all 
social activity. Today, we associate political 
and religious toleration of a government with its 
political progress. We find no fault with the 
American government because it is tolerant. We 
say that it is the most efficient of governments. 
It tolerates all creeds, exactly as Poland had been 
tolerating them. America receives within her 
shore all who have the wish to come and make 
their home here; Poland anticipated America in 
this respect a thousand years. America extends 
citizenship to all eligible new-comers ; Poland had 



130 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



followed the same policy for centuries. 

Should a nation, a government, which oppresses 
its subordinate people, robs them of their reli- 
gion, their language, their very racial character 
of self-government, and a government which paid 
deference to the national customs of its sub- 
ordinate people, tolerated their religion and per- 
mitted the use of their language, be unable to 
self -govern? The efficiency of a government is 
not measured by the ultimate good of the state, 
irrespective of the good of the individual, but 
it is measured by the good it renders to the indi- 
vidual. If one were to recall history, understand 
the nature of the Polish government, compare it 
with the autocratic governments even today, add 
to it the balance of progress Poland was pre- 
vented from achieving, it were impossible to say 
that the Poles, kin to Chrobry and Sobieski, 
brothers to Kosciuszko and Pulaski, are not 
qualified to self-govern. 



Chapter VIII. 

CAUSES OF POLAND'S DOWNFALL. 

^^Poland fell because her neighbors were 
greedy, unscrupulous and strong! Poland fell he- 
cause she was generous, humane and weak! Po- 
land fell, to tell you the truth, because she had no 
permanent army to defend her possessions.^^ 

— Ignace J. Paderewski — Address at the Audito- 
rium Theatre, Chicago, 111., February 5, 1916. 

When the first conference of the Hague, 1899, 
enunciated that her improvident generosity was 
the cause of Poland's downfall, they state merely 
one of its minor causes. There were external, 
before the internal causes, to bring the country 
to ruin — causes which the usurpers had delib- 
erately placed to bring Poland to ultimate sub- 
jection. 

Poland's outstanding feature was her gener- 
osity in dealing with the neighboring nations. 
She would pursue no territorial advantages, nor 
covet to grow strong at the expense of her neigh- 



132 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

bor, Poland was guided by disinterested mo- 
tives ; to save Christianity, to help advance civil- 
ization, to be of service to her neighbor. Had 
Poland pursued an aggressive policy, as did her 
neighboring countries for a century and more, 
had she subdued nations and taken territories, 
had she crushed her very future usurpers when 
she had them in her power, and thereby strength- 
ened herself and weakened them, there is not the 
least doubt that she would have never been di- 
vided. 

The internal causes which tended to bring Po- 
land's downfall had their origin in the liberal 
Polish Constitution, but were rendered effective 
only under the influence of the external causes. 
The Polish Constitution did not make for cen- 
tralism. The king enjoyed only a nominal power 
and was much at the mercy of the nobility, in 
whom the regime was really vested. An indiffer- 
ent fact in itself, it proved, nevertheless, harmful 
in the face of the dangerous diplomatic develop- 
ments in the European courts in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. Though they marked 
efficient statesmanship in theory, the elective 



Causes of Poland's Downfall. 133 

assemblies were in practice powerful factors to 
deduct from the central strength of the nation. 
Foreign candidates were allowed to compete for 
the Polish throne, and it was only too often that 
they succeeded in gaining many influential sup- 
porters. The danger was brought to a fatal de- 
velopment when the law of unanimity became 
a powerful and effective weapon in the hands of 
foreign candidates for King. In the seventeenth 
century the Polish Constitution would frequently 
present the world with the anamolous spectacle 
where, by virtue of this law of unanimity, a 
deputy could stop the most needed state reforms, 
or prevent even vital military measures from 
passing the Senate in the face of foreign in- 
vasions. 

Military "unpreparedness" was another cause 
to dissolve the Polish government. The nobility 
retained in their hands, not only the authority 
of the State, but the power of the sword. Each 
noted Polish nobleman had his own army, offi- 
cered by men of his choosing, and independent of 
the national army. Many magnates commanded 
strong contingents, and though they willingly 



134 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



offered their service when the country was in 
need of it, still they were often jealous of the 
Crown, and took care not to unduly strengthen 
the regular army. The "Pospolite ruszenie," or 
general armament, was looked upon as the im- 
penetrable defense of the country. It is clear 
that an army of this type, which bore more than 
the mere appearance of independent groups, 
could not hit as hard as a regular army, dis- 
ciplined and officered on the plan of uniformity, 
and subject to an absolute command. It was not 
an unusual occurrence in Poland, that, while the 
enemy threatened to invade the country, the no- 
bility thought it an opportune time to extort 
privileges from the Crown at the expense of sus- 
pending their military co-operation, and thus 
placing the safety of the nation into the hands 
of the enemy. 

The political philosophy in Poland did not en- 
courage military science. The nobility continued 
serving on horseback. To be a soldier, a knight 
of the Commonwealth, was considered a privilege, 
enjoyable by the nobility alone. The peasant was 



Causes of Poland's Downfall. 135 

no candidate for soldier. The dangerous possi- 
bilities with which the custom was fraught be- 
came a terrible actuality in the face of the mili- 
tary progress of the neighboring states. The 
Polish cavalry would suffice to assure security 
and independence, had other countries pursued 
a similar system. But while Russia had armed 
her peasants and recruited them into a strong 
and effective infantry, and Prussia began to rely 
more on a standing army, recruited from the 
lower classes, Poland possessed no infantry to 
support her cavalry, and adopted none of those 
military improvements, which made warfare an 
arduous and extensive science. The Polish horse- 
men were adequate for making short ir- 
ruptions, for cutting the enemy in the open 
field, as they had done to the Tartar in- 
vasions, or to the Turks under Vienna. 
But they were necessarily unqualified for 
carrying out extensive hostilities on a com- 
prehensive plan of operation. They grew more 
incapable of encountering the armies of the neigh- 
boring countries in proportion as these developed 
a strong and disciplined infantry. The nobles 



136 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

in Poland, amounting to a half a million, would 
not arm their peasants nor trust a mercenary 
army. The military system of Russia and Prus- 
sia followed the nature of their governments. 
The Czar employed a standing army, recruited 
from the peasantry, on the principles of Eastern 
barbarism. They were, as slaves, ready to obey 
the will of their master. They were obedient 
tools of the will of the autocrat. If they had no 
ambition, they likewise had no fear. The same 
with some exception was true of Prussia. Poland 
had no standing army, recruited from the peas- 
antry. Hence, the curious phenomenon that, 
while her future usurpers had a standing army, 
republican Poland would reject it. 

The geographical situation of Poland also con- 
tributed to her partitions. No other country waa 
so exposed to the inroads of invaders as was 
Poland. There were no seas, no mountains to 
protect her. England was protected by sea, Ger- 
many, by sea and mountains, Russia was open 
only in the west. But Poland was open from all 
sides. The Hun, the Tartar, the Turk and the 
Muscovite marched westward. Poland had no 
natural obstacles to oppose them with. Her open 



Causes of Poland's Downfall. 137 

boundaries appeared inviting to the Muscovite 
armies. The Teuton found it easy to press east- 
ward. Then, too, Poland was a republic hemmed 
in among three military powers. She had no 
allies to co-operate with. Even for this, Poland 
had to fall in the face of the aggressive spirit of 
her neighbors. The result was soon brought 
home to Poland when, together with it, other 
more serious causes united in bringing down her 
ruin. 

The external causes, that really were respon- 
sible for the dismemberment of Poland, can be 
made very clear today by pointing out that Po- 
land of the eighteenth century suffered the fate of 
Belgium and Serbia of 1914. Like these, Poland 
had been suppressed by ruthless might. 

Poland was a republican State. The neighbor- 
ing countries were rigid monarchies. In the east 
was Russia, a despotic power. West to Poland 
lay Prussia, characterized for her peculiar ag- 
gressiveness. While republican Poland neces- 
sarily lacked that centralistic power that makes 
for unity and is an indispensable asset for a coun- 
try sandwiched between two aggressive powers, 
that very unity made Poland's enemies efficient 



138 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

aggressors. The progress Eussia made under Pe- 
ter the Great, and the progress Prussia achieved 
under Frederick the Great were causes to vastly 
contribute to the fall of Poland. "The position 
of Poland," says Moltke^, "made it a stumbling 
block to powerful neighbors who had in the last 
centuries made immense progress, and whose 
rapid development was certain to bring about 
their own ruin or to annihilate all obstacles. Both 
Austria and Prussia were unanimous in their 
opinion that they would prefer the "anarchy" of 
the republic to assisting in turning a good neigh- 
bor into a powerful monarchy which would be 
dangerous to all adjoining states." 

For a long time Russia saw no reason to covet 
Poland. But with the accession of Peter the Great 
to the throne, Russia became aroused to that life 
which made her a European rather than an 
Asiatic state. "On, to the West," became with 
Russia a catchword — a slogan which she has fol- 
lowed to this day. Russia naturally looked West 
for a market. Her raw exports passed West 
through Poland. Russia naturally coveted the 

* Account of Affairs and Social Conditions in Poland. 



Causes of Poland's Downfall. 139 



possession of a country so advantageously situ- 
ated. It soon developed that Poland, "One of the 
oldest of European States/' to quote Moltke^, "be- 
held with terror its position between two of the 
youngest monarchies of this part of the world, 
whose aggressive development was completely 
blockaded by its geographical location." From 
the time of Peter the Great, Russia considered 
Poland a stepping stone to the West. Russian 
troops would infest the country under the slight- 
est pretext. The situation reached its climax 
under Catherine. "It depends^ only on me alone," 
said the Czarine, "whether the name of Poland is 
to be struck out of the map of Europe." 

The nascent Prussia, on the other hand, was as 
eager to expand Eastward as Russia was to ad- 
vance Westward. Since her emancipation from 

the Polish sovereignty, Prussia made an unusu- 
ally rapid progress in the development of her 
State, and that military system which 

must be brought to an end by a victory 
of the allies. Having emerged victorious 

* Account of Affairs and Social Conditions in Poland. 

' Parsons — History of the Polish Catholicity and the Russian 
"Orthodoxy." 



140 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



from her various and extended wars, Prus- 
sia became a fit party to powerful coali- 
tions and a Power to be reckoned with. She al- 
ready evinced her peculiar aggressiveness and 
those tendencies towards militarism and towards 
placing Might in the place of Right, and judging 
the morality of every activity by the end of the 
deified State, with which the world has of late 
become painfully familiar. Frederick the Great 
was a true exponent of Prussianism, and, nat- 
urally, found in Catherine of Russia a faithful 
co-opeartor in their common desire of strengthen- 
ing their power by the division of Poland. 

What strikes one as peculiar the way the 
causes for the downfall of Poland have been ac- 
counted for, is the undue emphasis on the internal 
causes to the disregard of the external causcv^., 
which plainly contributed to the suppression of 
the Kingdom. But as the usurpers must be blamed 
for the external, and Poland for the internal 
causes, and as the usurpers became Poland's his- 
torians, it is not hard to understand why such 
was the case. It lay, of course, in the interest of 
the usurpers to justify the partitions and to in- 



Causes of Poland's Downfall. 141 

criminate the nation. They would not say that 
Poland fell because they placed causes to lead to 
her downfall, but they said: Poland could no 
longer exist for her internal troubles, which for- 
feited her right to self-government. 

As there is no other partition of a country as 
that of Poland, so there is no other, more false 
and unjust misrepresentation of the history of 
Poland leading to the partitions. The way 
Polish history of the last century and a half has 
been falsified and misrepresented is without a 
parallel, and one of its effects has, until recently, 
been a foregone conviction that the Poles were un- 
able to govern themselves. Adepts to the theory 
that the excessive nobility caused the ruin of the 
country — that defective military science caused 
the ruin of the country — that Poland lacked that 
centralistic power which makes for unity and 
strength, said that these were only imperfections 
flowing out of the two cardinal defects of the 
country, its "anarchy'' and its "Liberum Veto.'' 
Those who strove to justify the partition and tar- 
nish the competency of the Polish to self-govern- 



142 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ment, emphasized these with as much vehemence 
as inconsistency. 

What was the Polish anarchy? What were its 
causes? Could one expect a better situation 
under the like political conditions? Were there 
no similar, perhaps worse, anarchies elsewhere? 



Chapter IX. 

THE SO-CALLED POLISH ANARCHY. 

^^ Catherine (Queen of Russia) wa^s the great 
criminal. She had for eight years oppressed, be- 
trayed and ravaged Poland — imposed a king on 
that country — prevented all reformation of the 
government — fomented divisions among the no- 
bility — andy in one word, created and maintained 
that anarchy which she at length used as a pre- 
tense for dismemberment/^ 

— Sir James MacKintosh — An Account of the 
Partitions of Poland — Edinburgh Review, 
Vol. XXXVII. 

No government is without fault, and a tempo- 
rary mismanagement or confusion in the govern- 
ment does not mean that the people do not know 
how to govern themselves. If this were true, then 
one could safely say that no people on earth are 
really capable of self-government. The capacity 
of the American government cannot be judged by 
the period of the Civil War. Such periods are 



144 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



judged in the light of their causes and effects. 
The defection of the slave-holding states, and the 
bloody struggle for national unity that followed 
it, were not signs of "anarchy'' nor signs that the 
Americans were incapable of self-government. 
They rather brought out positive qualities in the 
life of the people. They gave the American peo- 
ple a seriousness, dignity and manliness they had 

perhaps up to that time lacked. It were certainly 
unfair to the French to take the period of the 

French Revolution to judge by it the competency 
of the French government. One would certainly 
get a wrong idea about the Irish being able to 
govern self, if he were to judge them by the period 
of the Penal Code. 

It is wrong to point out the disturbed condi- 
tions in Poland preceding the partitions, as bring- 
ing her downfall, and to forget similar and worse 
political conditions, that obtained in practically 
every European country at that time. A political 
hurricane swept over Europe at that time. All 
the countries felt the shock. All tottered under 
its impact. None was found perfect. All needed 
to be reformed. Some governments survived the 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 145 

cataclj^sm. Others passed through it, but per- 
manently scarred. Poland fell, but not as a 
result of this "shock" alone. There were other 
causes to contribute to Poland's fall, which were 
not peculiar to other countries. But because 
Poland lost her independence, while other coun- 
tries had accidentally escaped a similar misfor- 
tune, it is falsehood to say that Poland fell as a 
result of her "anarchy,'' and an inability of her 
people to govern self. 

Many historians are over-conclusive in treat- 
ing the causes underlying the downfall of Poland. 
They would do well to studj^ the history of par- 
ticular nations on a broader scale, to study the 
relation of one nation to another, and in turn 
their relation to Poland, and to establish a par- 
allel between the "anarchy" of Poland and the 
"anarchy" in other countries. We would refer 
them to unprejudiced sources, not Polish, for 
they are likely to think them one-sided, but to 
sources prepared by others than Poles, who 
treated the question from an objective point of 
view. 



146 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Perhaps adepts to theories that Poland lost 
self-government through her anarchy, would not 
like to read Marius-Ary Leblong's work on Po- 
land. "Indeed," he says, "it is culpable, it is crim- 
inal ingratitude to charge Poland with anarchy — 
she is the first martyr of European democracy. We 
owe her with our veneration for the magnificent 
and pathetic self-sacrifice, an eternal acknowledg- 
ment for her inspiring devotion, which brought 
her to misery.'' Perhaps such historians would 
mitigate their convictions regarding the Polish 
"anarchy" as responsible for her downfall, had 
they the patience to read Michalet, who made a 
laborious study of Poland and could truly say: 
"We have sought the truth eagerly, long, labori- 
ously, with a truly religious fervor. No other 
reading, no other study has cost us so much to 
attain it." Such a scholar is worth while listen- 
ing to, and he says: "In the profound darkness 
they brought about, the murderers came and 
stoutly blasphemed over the corpse of their vic- 
tim. There was no Poland. She did not exist. 
* * * We have killed nothing." 

"Then, seeing the stupefaction of Europe, its 
silence, and that many seemed to believe them, 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 147 

they added coldly: "Besides, If she existed, she 
deserved to die. * * * if there were a Poland, 
it would be a power of the Middle Ages, a back- 
ward state, addicted to aristocratic institutions." 

The term "anarchy" was not a particular term 
to designate the dangerous political condition 
which obtained in Poland towards the close of 
the eighteenth century. It was a general term to 
express the much disturbed political affairs which 
were then common to nearly every European 
country. There was anarchy in Italy and Spain, 
France and England. The very usurpers, who 
sought to justify the dismemberment of Poland 
in her disturbed conditions, had to contend with 
unbalanced political affairs at home which were 
worse than those in Poland. 

The French revolution was coeval with the 
partitions of Poland. There was, in many re- 
spects, a close relation between the two. One 
yielded a decided influence on the other. His- 
torians find no difficulty in accounting for the 
causes which led to the French Eevolution. No 
historian has ever said, however, that the Eevolu- 
tion in France followed as a result of the French 



148 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

not being able to self govern. In fact, the French 
anarchy or revolution covered a period of time 
too short to justify any assertion of this nature. 
It was an '^Age of Anarchism/' and France 
plunged deeper than did other countries. No other 
country was so near disintegration as was 
France during the terrible days of her Revolu- 
tion. With her King executed, with her govern- 
ment abolished, with adventurers at the head of 
a provisional government, with one faction risen 
in arms against another, with the scaffold as the 
supreme court of justice, and with foreign armies 
marching on Paris, France presented the very 
nest of anarchism at a time when Poland had 
yet possessed political being. H. Vast^ draws a 
life-like picture of Poland during the partitions 
when he says of France: "Five foreign armies 
entered French territory and at the same time 
civil war raged throughout the interior. La Ven- 
dee, uprising, opened to emigrants and to the 
Enlish, the road to the centre of France. * * ♦ 
The conference which held at Anvers on the mor- 
row of the treason of Domouriez left no one 

^ La Guerre Montaguarde. 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 149 



doubting as to the real intention of the coalition. 
* * * Auckland declared that England in- 
tended to reduce France to a veritable political 
non-entity. * * * The combination which ob- 
tained at the court of Vienna consisted in an- 
nexing the French Flanders, Artois and Picardie 
to Austria. * ♦ * ^he Prussian diplomats 
desired to keep for their sovereign the provinces 
of Alsace and Lorraine. The Russian minister, 
Markoff, said to Coblenz : "Take possession of the 
French provinces which are to your convenience." 
France, then, was not far from suffering the fate 
of Poland. Had France occupied the territory 
Poland occupies, what doubt is there but that 
she would have been divided in the same way 
Poland had been divided, and historians, who 
dared not write to displease their sovereigns, 
would say : France fell because she did not know 
how to govern self. 

If the conditions that prevailed in Poland dur- 
ing the partitions deserve the name of anarchy, 
what should the French revolution be called? If 
the "anarchy'^ of Poland should be a sign of the 
absence of governmental competency in Poland, 



150 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

should the period of the French revolution be 
construed as a sign of its presence in France? 
But the periods were too short to indicate any 
permanent quality of the two governments. 

'^Dissensions, anarchy, inability of governing 
ourselves ! How do these things look in the light 
of positive historical facts? Our Statute of Wis- 
lica, established in 1347, was chronologically the 
first complete code of Christian Europe. * * * 

"Already in the fifteenth century, a self-govern- 
ing country, Poland became, in 1573, a regular 
republic, with kings elected for life, as presidents. 
In 1430, consequently 259 years before the 
Habeas Corpus of England, and 359 years before 
the Declaration of Human Eights in France, Po- 
land established her famous laws: "Neminem 
captivabimus, nisi iure victum," which, translated 
into English, means : "Nobody should be detained 
unless legally convicted." 

"Our broad, liberal constitution of 1791 pre- 
ceded by 57 years the constitution of Germany 
and of Austria, and by 114 years the so-called 
constitution of Russia. And all these momentous 
reforms, all these radical changes, unlike in other 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 151 

countries, were accomplished without revolution, 
without any bloodshed, without the loss of one 
single human life ; by unanimous vote, in a quiet, 
most peaceful, most dignified way. Does it prove 
our anarchy ; does it prove our inability of govern- 
ing ourselves?"^ 

To accuse France of not being able to self- 
govern because of her temporary anarchy, would 
be to lay the same charge at the feet of most of 
the European nations at that time ; for all labored 
under anarchistic tendencies in some form or 
other. You cannot judge France by the short 
period of the revolution to the exclusion of cen- 
turies of the most noble history — her early de- 
fense of Christianity, her devotedness to letters 
and arts any more than you can judge Poland by 
the short period of her history, which is wrongly 
called anarchical in the face of her creditable his- 
tory, her early endeavor to advance and defend 
Christianity — her tolerant democracy — her un- 
precedented attempt at a radical reform of her 
government. Well could a contemporary writer 

* Igance J. Paderewski — Address at the Auditorium Theatre, 
Chicago, Illinois, February 5th, 1916, 



152 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



say: "If you blight with the name anarchy the 
former political system of Poland, and you com- 
mit a grievous historical fault ; you take the symp- 
toms of a period relatively short for the general 
character of the whole history of Poland; you 
pass over in complete silence a long and brilliant 
period of her history ; you disregard the immense 
services rendered by this nation to humanity." 

But still the general charge is that there was 
anarchy in Poland and that it was largely the 
result of an ill-regulated government. What was 
the anarchy? It was not an underhand machi- 
nation of a given party in the government to do 
away with the King, or to subvert the constitu- 
tion of the State. Such had never been the case 
in Poland. The Poles had ever evinced the high- 
est regard for their King. History records no 
instance where an attempt had been made to take 
the life of any of the large number of Kings that 
graced the royal catalog of Poland. If the "an- 
archy" should mean a continued attempt to be- 
tray the country, we again deny that such was the 
case with Poland. True, there were individuals 
at times just as they were in every country of 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 153 



the globe, who made attempts to advance pri- 
vate, at the expense of the public good. They 
formed, however, exceptions, hardly meriting a 
mention, except, perhaps, to bring out the rare 
degree of resentment the nation showed them, 
and the complete social and political deprivations 
they suffered as a result. This brings out the 
high quality of citizenship rather than its absence. 
Poland was an elective monarchy. At the de- 
mise of the king, the voters (the nobility) assem- 
bled to elect a new king, much in the same way 
as the electoral college of the United States elects 
the President. Different political parties sup- 
ported their candidate for king. The defeated 
party would naturally resent their defeat, and 
take measures to win at the next election. Such 
a state of affairs was perhaps not the best factor 
to promote the welfare of the State, though it 
fostered that activity in the government which 

follows opposition of parties — a truth which is 
common knowledge in the United States. Poland 

was an early democracy — and the Polish State 

was co-extensive with the "people,'^ as then under- 



154 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



stood. It should be remembered that Poland was 
a republican state surrounded by monarchial pow- 
ers — that her appreciation of freedom and equal- 
ity based on the dignity of the individual — her 
early attempt at popular voting — her early appre- 
ciation of "a government by the consent of the 
governed"^ though they ill compared with the pol- 
icy of the centralistic powers which surrounded 
her, they nevertheless denoted Poland's political 
competency in the light of the now political doc- 
trines. Poland cannot be justly judged by the 
present, much perfected, system of popular vot- 
ing. In putting the republican theory into prac- 
tice, she necessarily stumbled over unforeseen 
obstacles. :., j 

Poland cannot be made to respond for the "an- 
archy" Russia and Prussia unceasingly fomented 
among her people in an effort to find a pretext 
for bringing the country to ruin. Perhaps it 
would be just as correct to attribute to Poland 
her alleged incapacity to self-govern as a result 
of her anarchy external powers did everything to 
encourage, as it would be right to say that the 

* President Wilson — Message to the Senate, January 22, 1917. 



The So-Called Polish Anarchy. 155 



Belgians are unable to self-govern because they 
could not stay the onrush of the German army 
in 1914. "Catherine," says Sir James MacKin- 
tosh/ ** was the great criminal. She had for eight 
years oppressed, betrayed and ravaged Poland — 
imposed a king on that country — prevented all 
reformation of the government — fomented divi- 
sions among the nobility — and in one word 
created and maintained that anarchy which she 
at length used as a pretense for dismemberment." 
** Since the last century,'' says Moltke,^ ** Poland 
had been accustomed to seeing Eussian armies 
within its boundaries, sometimes to protect the 
so-called oppressed dissenters, * * * once to 
preserve the freedom of the nobility, that is the 
anarchy so necessary to the neighbor, another 
time to keep the "Liberum Veto" in force; for 
after public opinion had condemned it, Kussian 
arms continued to restore it." Such is the nature 
of the "Polish anarchy" and the extent of respon- 
sibility that should be attributed not to Poland, 
but to the usurpers of Poland. 

1 An account of the Partitions of Poland — Edinburgh Re- 
view, Vol. XXXVII. 

2 Account of Afifairs and Social Conditions in Poland. 



Chapter X. 

THE "LIBERUM VETO/' 

// it seems utterly inexplicable that a legisla- 
lature would thus surTender (by virtue of the 
Liberum Veto) all its poiver^ a medieval Pole 
might with reason retort^ that in the American 
Senate unlimited debate is eveji now permitted, 
that according to high parliamentary authority, 
the great bulk of legislation is done virtually by 
unaniynous consent, and, most suggestive of all, 
that a single member by a point of order, may 
strike from a supply bill any proposed limitation 
on the use of the funds/^ 

— Judson C. Williver — Poland's Story — Century 
Magazine, May, 1915. 

Quite a logical development of the Liberal con- 
stitution of Poland was the law of unanimity, 
commonly known as the "Liberum Veto." In its 
simplest form, it was a power or privilege en- 
joyed by every deputy in the Polish senate to pre- 
vent any measure from becoming a law by calling 



The "Liberum Veto." 157 

out "Liberum Veto." It was based on the com- 
mon assumption^ of the absolute equality of every 
Polish nobleman, and its consequent corol- 
lary, that the majority had no right to 
impose laws which would conflict Avith the 
interest of the minority, even should the 
minority consist of a single deputy. If, 
then, a single deputy believed that a meas- 
ure at issue was at variance with the good of 
his constituencv, he was free to rise and call out : 
^'Liberum Veto,'' when the measure at once fell 
to the ground. At its fullest development, the 
Liberum Veto gave any single deputy the power 
to suspend at any time, and for any reason, the 
proceedings of the Diet, when all the measures 
already passed became null and void, and if they 
were to become laws at all, they had to be re- 
submitted at the next Diet. In itself, and with- 
out relation to its origin and the nature of the 
Polish government and the civic virtues of the 
old Polish nobles, the law of unanimity appears 
visions in its nature, dangerous in its ap- 
plication and out of keeping with all the prin- 

'Bain. 



158 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ciples of good government. But if it is left in its 
proper element, and judged, not as isolated, but in 
relation to its origin and those factors which ren- 
dered it harmless and inoffensive, it assumes the 
character of a useful law rather than a vicious 
measure. 

The Liberum Veto owed its origin to the demo- 
cratic spirit of the Poles, and developed as a corol- 
lary to the absolute equality of the noblemen. It 
was a practical measure when it was necessary 
to cut short lengthy debates, when Poland was 
constantly exposed to the inroads of the Eastern 
barbarians, and when the Dietines had to act 
quickly and decisively in the face of ever-threat- 
ening danger. The law of unanimity extended 
further than the Polish nation. Charlemagne 
enacted a law which required unanimity in leg- 
islative assemblies. It was also found in the early 
Sabori or conventions in Russia. 

To properly appreciate the nature of the Lib- 
erum Veto, and to arrive at a fair knowledge 
of its practicability, it is necessary to review it 
in its potential stage, where it was originally 
intended to be confined. This stage covered the 



The "Liberum Veto." 159 



period from the time the law was first used up 
to 1652, when no assembly was dissolved 
by means of the privilege. Again, it is one thing 
to judge it in theory and with reference to mod- 
ern legislative chambers, and quite another thing 
to view it in practice, and as a development of 
the unique structure of the old Polish constitu- 
tion. 

Up to 1652, no Diet had been dissolved by vir- 
tue of the absolute negative, though for centuries 
before that time the Dietines had as much power 
to suspend legislative proceedings as they had 
from the middle of the seventeenth^ to the middle 
of the eighteenth century, when the privilege was 
made use of. Until the time when the first Diet 
was dissolved, the law of unanimity resolved itself 
into the principle, common to legislative assem- 
blies, of the minority acceding to the will of the 
majority ; for, though in theory every Polish Sen- 
ator was conscious of the enormous power he was 
at liberty to exercise by virtue of the Liberum 
Veto, that he was really co-extensive with the 
State, yet in practice he invariably waived his 
privilege when the good of the commonwealth was 
at issue. 



160 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

In its early application, then, the Liberum 
Veto was really a principle of the minority and 
the majority. Whatever potential evil there was 
in the law, it was more than offset by the civic vir- 
tues of the Dietines, by their deeply rooted love 
of country, and by the admirable disinterested- 
ness of the Polish gentry. Free from the disrup- 
tive influences of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, the Poles assembled in the Diet would 
think it a vicious crime to dissolve its delibera- 
tions to further private good at the ex- 
pense of the Republic. The Pole placed 
his love of country next to the love of 
God, and he would no more think of being 
disloyal to his country, which gave him so 
powerful a privilege as the Liberum Veto, than 
he would forego to defend his faith against the 
infidel. "Every infringement," says Moltke,^ 
"upon the unanimity of vote was considered a 
national calamity. A heredity curse was placed 
upon such a deputy, and his family went into 
disrepute; * * * he was cursed by the nation 
and hated by all." If you prescind the power a 

^ Moltke — Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions 
of Poland. 



The "Liberum Veto." 161 



deputy to the Polish Senate possessed in the Lib- 
erum Veto from his patriotic fervor which was 
with him synonymous with religious zeal, and 
from the traditional disinterestedness with which 
he invariably placed the public good above the 
private, and from these provisions in the Polish 
Constitution which were to offset its ruinous pos- 
sibilities, vou would have the Liberium Veto 
in its crude nature, with its dangerous possibili- 
ties without its mitigating relations, a vici- 
ous principle rather than a practical measure, an 
anomolous law rather than a logical development 
of the old Polish constitution, a tendency towards 
anarchy rather than a traditional appreciation 
of freedom. 

If one were to endow a modern legislative body 
with the law of unanimity that obtained in 
ancient Poland, and judge its dangerous possi- 
bilities by the certain disorder it would create 
in an assembly of hundreds of Senators, his con- 
clusion would be far from being correct. In a 
modern assembly where a multitude of delegates 
assemble, each possessing the power of vetoing 
any measure that did not meet his approval, 



162 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

unanimity would be entirely out of question. The 
old Polish Senate, where the law of unanimity 
was practicable, was much simpler in its proced- 
ure than are modern legislative chambers. The 
Polish Senators were not representatives, but 
ministers. They had no power to act as they saw 
it opportune, but their power was limited by 
the rigid instructions they received from their 
constituencies. The Diet, again, was not a delib- 
erative assembly as are modern Senates, but a 
convention of delegates whose entire business 
consisted in declaring the will of their constitu- 
encies. 

Before the meeting of the general Diet, where 
the Liberum Veto was exercisable, provincial 
councils were held, where deputies convened to 
discuss questions to be presented at the general 
Diet. Upon agreement of such councils as to the 
questions at issue, delegates were chosen to rep- 
resent them at the General Diet by placing their 
claims or concessions. They were not commis- 
sioned to deliberate. The General Diet was not 
formally a deliberative chamber. Their business 
was simple to present the result of the delibera- 



The "Liberum Veto." 163 

tions of the provincial councils. In this way, the 
number of delegates to the General Diet was 
largely reduced and the proceedings of the Diet 
much simplified. The American Constitution 
offers striking points of similarity to the old Pol- 
ish Constitution in the way it provides for the 
election of the President, not immediately by the 
people, but mediately through the electors. 

Each delegate, of course, was empowered to 
suspend the Diet by his Liberum Veto privilege, 
but as a matter of fact he did not use it until 
1652, but readily forewent the claims of his con- 
stituency, if the good of the State demanded. A 
telling example of this we have in 1401, when 
the dissenting minority acceded to the majority 
to purchase a tract of land, Dobrzyn, from the 
Knights of the Cross. It was a custom that the 
minor Diets to give their deputies imperative in- 
structions to offer, not regarding their own 
claims, no opposition to measures which fur- 
thered the good of the Republic. 

it is quite another thing to consider the Lib- 
erum Veto in the era of its abuse, when the dis- 
solution of the old Polish civil virtues rendered 



164 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

it possible for the law of unanimity to evolve from 
its potential state to a vicious actuality in the 
face of external pressure. When Sicinski, a dep- 
uty from Upita, first used his power to suspend 
the action of the Diet in 1652, he instituted a 
dangerous precedent, and at once displaced by 
his selfish motive all the traditional factors which 
kept it from becoming harmful. The nation 
cursed the selfish deputy. His family went into 
disrenown. He was shorn of citizenship and 
placed without the pale of society. But the evil 
had been done. Thereafter, Diets had been dis- 
solved frequently and relentlessly ; business, how- 
ever pressing, was often brought to a standstill ; 
a deputy could always be bribed to make us of 
his absolute power. 

Had the infamous deputy of Upita lived a cen- 
tury earlier, his selfish act would not likely have 
proved dangerous, as the Polish civic virtues 
were then at their best, and found a more laud- 
able outlet than the Liberum Veto. But it was a 
time when the traditional patriotism of the no- 
bility showed symptoms of weakness, and when 
the neighboring States started to lay foundations 



The "Liberum Veto." 165 

for the subsequent aggressive monarchies, and 
when political science became so vitiated that it 
was considered an act of high diplomacy to sup- 
press one nation for the sake of another. The 
Poles were not without fault. The high lords 
would wrest undue concessions from the crown. 
Jealousies of the many influential families were 
getting worse every day. Then it was that the 
Liberum Veto became an as unreasonable as vici- 
ous privilege in the hands of quarreling factions. 
The minority would seldom accede to the major- 
ity. The privilege was often had recourse to in 
furtherance of private good to the detriment of 
the Republic. Then the world beheld the unpre- 
cedented spectacle in political history when one 
dissenting voice would oppose the will of the 
whole nation to arrest its activity, to deprive it 
of its power of action, to render it inanimate and 
make it a plaything in the hands of possible 
invaders. 

It is forcibly plain what havoc had the Liberum 
Veto played with the integrity of Poland in rela- 
tion to the elective Diets, to the geographical 
position of Poland, and the rapid development of 



166 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



the aggressive monarchies which set their lustful 
eyes on Poland. The fact that foreign candidates 
were accessible to the competition for the Polish 
throne was a menace to the Eepublic, which nat- 
urally became rampant with the abuse of the Lib- 
erum Veto. It was within the power of foreign- 
ers to procure, by its means, the suspension of 
an elective Diet in their favor. The Liberum Veto 
was no reason for the division of Poland, for it 
lay in the interest of Eussia to suppress her just 
as much as it lay in the interest of Prussia to 
secure a portion of the Polish territory. Poland's 
thriving democracy alone constituted a sufficient 
reason with the three nations to break up her 
integrity. But if these were reasons for the dis- 
memberment, the Liberum Veto was a powerful 
instrument in the hands of Poland's future usurp- 
ers in bringing their nefarious deed to a speedier 
finish. Bussian gold flooded the country, and 
renegade deputies could always be found to dis- 
rupt the deliberations of the Diet. It is a his- 
torical fact that after public opinion condemned 
the law of unanimity and the Polish noblemen 
willingly disclaimed it, Russia did every- 
thing to keep it in force. 



The "Liberum Veto." 167 

With the national reassertion after the first 
partition and the vigorous reformatory measures 
the Poles adopted to save their country, the Lib- 
erum Veto lost its force. It had been branded as 
an instrument of foreign policy to disrupt the 
State, and, as a consequence, in the Diets held 
between 1778 and 1788 no deputy dared employ 
his negative. Legislation was again voted and 
passed on the principle of the majority. 

If it should appear altogether impossible how 
a medieval Poland should surrender all her legis- 
lative power into the hands of a single deputy, 
and thus make herself co-extensive with one sub- 
ject, it were well to remember that the develop- 
ment of the Liberum Veto far exceeded its orig- 
inal scope, that the legislation in Poland up to 
1652 was done on the principle of the majority, 
that the Spartan virtues of the medieval Poles 
did more than compensate for the potential dan- 
ger of the fatal law, that it was only during her 
period of decline that it became harmful, and that 
it was permanently abolished in the Constitution 
of the 3rd of May, 1789. 



168 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



If again it were insisted that the development 
of the Liberum Veto was ascribed to the nation's 
limited ability to self-govern rather than to the 
excessive appreciation of freedom and equality 
among the Poles, it would be hard to account for 
Poland making a creditable history with so dis- 
ruptive an element, unless she was the more able 
to self-govern because she governed despite it. 
The Liberum Veto was a peculiarly Polish law, 
and is intelligible only in the light of the Polish 
political philosophy and the old Polish idea of 
patriotism. Considered in the light of modern 
legislative assemblies, the Liberum Veto has no 
meaning, unless it is naively used to depreciate 
the ability of the Poles to self-govern. 

To assert that the Liberum Veto with its con- 
comitant tolerant democracy brought the division 
of Poland, is to disregard the teaching of history. 
France, for example, with her hereditary mon- 
archy, a centralized power with no Liberum Veto, 
escaped the fate of Poland only because her geo- 
graphical situation made her partition impossible. 
Spain, Germany, England and Austria had their 
periods of decadence, strifes and civil wars. 



The "Liberum Veto." 169 

when invasions of foreign armies would have 
meant a destruction of helpless nations. Many 
nations with institutions equally objectionable 
continued for ages safe and powerful. 

The old Liberum Veto, which was erroneously 
branded as the cause of Poland's downfall, bears 
curious lines of resemblance to the senatorial 
privilege of filibuster. By it, like by the Lib- 
erum Veto in old Poland, one senator can op- 
pose the will of the whole house. "A little group 
of willful men," in the words of President Wil- 
son, have the power to render the country "help- 
less and contemptible." 

When Senator Stone brought to naught a leg- 
islation which was intended by the majority, he 
enacted the role of Sicinski ; and when the Sixty- 
fourth Congress expired March 4th, without suc- 
ceeding to grant the President the necessary 
power to protect the right of American cititzens 
and to uphold the honor and safeguard the integ- 
rity of America, because of the effective opposi- 
tion of the very small minority, it appeared as 
though an old Polish Diet held its session in 
Washington. 



Chapter XI. 

REFORMATOEY MEASURES AND 

ECONOMIC PROGRESS. 

'^In France, to gain liberty, they began with 
anarchy; in Poland, the nation was given liberty 
and independence, the respect for the law, for 
person and property was assured, and all this 
without violence, without murder solely through 
the virtue of the courage of the nation, which, 
realizing her misfortune and her error, knew how 
to heal her wounds.'' 

— Baron d'Escare, after Poland promulgated her 
Constitution of the 3rd of May, 1791. 

It were unfair to insist that internal vices 
brought the downfall of the Polish republic, and, 
that these bespoke the Poles incapable of self- 
government, and to forego quoting the reforma- 
tory measures they took in an effort to save their 
country, and the economic and social progress 
they achieved since the partitions. Capability is 



Measures and Progress. 171 



judged by the efficiency in successfully coping 
with obstacles, and the governmental efficiency of 
the Poles is classically brought out in the meas- 
ures they adopted against national disintegration. 
Poland, at the time of the partitions, was not an 
overgrown, inanimate colossus which had existed 
and was ready to decay because the time to decay 
came. She was in every respect a nation to show 
a rare resisting activity, and to rally her forces 
to ward off the threatened encroachments by for- 
eign powers. The Polish nation was at bottom 
sound and possessed a surprising amount of vital- 
ity and reserved strength. 

It were equally unfair to the Poles to review 
their reformatory measures and economic prog- 
ress without paying regard to the violent opposi- 
tion that was constantly put in their way by the 
governments that usurped their rights. Auto- 
cratic in principle and deed, these governments 
grew fearful and jealous of the expansion of the 
Polish democracy, and did not hesitate long to 
manifest their disapproval by armed interfer- 
ence. Naturally, Poland was obliged to work out 
her political reform under the very torrent of 



172 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



disruptive influence from without. It must be 
remembered that the partitions of Poland took 
place not long before the Council of Vienna oc- 
curred, and that the same principles on which 
the map of Europe was then made over, guided 
the three powers in their relation to Poland. It 
was a time when the so-called principles of legiti- 
macy, or the rights of the rulers in opposition to 
the rights of the people held sway in Europe. 
Nations had no right distinct from their sov- 
ereigns, and sovereignty was gotten by conquest. 
The law of force was a principle Prussia acted on 
that time as she acts today. Autocracy claimed 
the leadership of the world, and the principle: 
"To the victim belong the spoils" was then an 
open motto with autocratic rulers. The prin- 
ciples which enabled the Congress of Vienna to 
link up in a single unnatural kingdom of the Bel- 
gians and the Dutch, and then unite Norway to 
Sweden, were applied in their fullest force to the 
dismembered Poland. Prussia's intrigues and 
perfidies played in the partition, and to what an 
extent it interfered with anything like a reforma- 
tory measure in Poland, which were manifestly 



Measures and Progress. 173 



opposed to Prussia's aims, can be amply gath- 
ered today from the world-wide Prussian system 
of espionage and intriguery that came to light in 
the war. 

For twenty years after the first partition, Po- 
land led a life of a buoyant political regenera- 
tion. During that period she had not only main- 
tained her own, but achieved remarkable success 
in coping with her enemy. Poland realized her 
threatened situation, and at once decided on a 
remedy. Following the first dismemberment, Po- 
land was no longer the country which abused the 
"Liberum Veto," no longer the "anarchial" nation 
which thought nothing of dissolving Diets. Po- 
land was repentant of fault and expectant of a 
better future. She was redeemed by her own 
mistake; on longer frivolous, but grave, not 
thoughtless but reflecting ; not heedless of danger, 
but watchful for every move of her enemy. Po- 
land was again the nation which gave birth to a 
Chroby, a Sobieski and a Corpenicus, and which 
was soon to create her famous Constitution and 

call forth her army of writers and poets, musi- 
cians and painters to keep alive her ancient heart. 



174 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Poland at this time was an active unit in the 
family of nations, with vitality enough to over- 
come all the evils that beset her. She was not 
merely able to exist, but to contribute to the 
general fund of civilization, to feel with human- 
ity, to labor for humanity and to carry out her 
idea of freedom and democracy. 

The first great measure the Poles took to res- 
cue their country from foreign aggression was to 
institute the "Perpetual Council," immediately 
after the first partition and during the temporary 
withdrawal of the Eussian army from the Pol- 
ish territory. Its immediate purpose was to cen- 
tralize state authority with a view of a more con- 
certed activity. Comprising thirty-six members, 
eighteen senators and eighteen representatives of 
the nobility to be elected every two years, the 
Perpetual Council embraced ^yq departments 
which were in nature and purpose similar to the 
governmental department of the United States. 
They were : The foreign department ; the coercive, 
or the department of the police; the military de- 
partment; the department of justice and the 
treasury department. The king exercised the 



Measures and Progress. 175 



office of president. The Perpetual Council com- 
prised men who were well qualified to uphold the 
honor of the nation, and who did laudable work 
in the interest of the country. 

But the council was only a forerunner of the 
thorough regeneration of the country, which was 
reached some twenty years later, in the establish- 
ment of the Constitution of the 3rd of May, of 
whose authors MacKintosh said:^ "History will 
one day do justice to that illustrious body and 
hold out to posterity, as the perfect model of the 
most arduous reformation — that revolution which 
fell to the ground from no want of wisdom on 
their part, but from the irresistible power and de- 
testable wickedness of their enemies." 

Another mark of Poland's social and political 
vitality at this time was the institution of the 
Commission of Education, which was really the 
first European Ministry of Education. Even in 
normal time, such measures as the Perpetual 
Council, the Commission of Education and the 
institution of the Constitution of the 3rd of May, 
could not help evoking the admiration of those 

*An account of the Partitions of Poland — Edinburgh Re- 
view, Vol. XXXVII. 



176 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



nations which leaned towards democratic prin- 
ciples, if not serving them object lessons. But 
as the Poles carried them through when they were 
much weakened by the first partition, when their 
enemy did everything to create turmoil in the 
country and whispered about that they were not 
able to take care of their government, and when 
the Kussian bayonet was drawn from the scab- 
bard to prevent any and all internal reforms that 
were likely to strengthen the country, we justly 
ask with right-minded historians whether they do 
not denote an unusual national vitality, a deep 
political foresight, a rare intellectual soundness 
and connote political competency? It is a pride 
for republican governments today to recall how 
well had Poland understood the value of an edu- 
cated body social, and, consequently, a high qual- 
ity of citizenship as a cornerstone to national in- 
tegrity and development. 

The social and political vitality of Poland at 
this time could not be at a low ebb, when it could 
in the midst of the most disastrous calamities that 
continued to rend her very vitals, call forth to 
her rescue such gallant scholars and statesmen 



Measures and Progress. 177 

as Kollonta^^, Malachowski, Ignatius Potocki, A. 
Czartoryski, A. Zamojski, A. Poniatowski, G. 
Piramowicz, John Andrew Sniadecki and a host 
of others. Surely, Poland should be given credit 
for the remarkable virtues she displayed at her 
very political deathbed, and it would be but jus- 
tice to her traditions not to insist that there was 
"anarchy" in Poland, and for that reason she for- 
feited her right to self-existence and lost her 
capacity of self-government she enjoyed for ten 
centuries. 

The Educational Commission, the Perpetual 
Council and the Constitution of the 3rd of May 
were not the only instances of the Polish regen- 
eration after the first partition. Other equally 
sweeping reforms followed. Commerce and tht^ 
manifold vouthful industries received a new and 
vigorous encouragement. Agriculture was given 
the closest attention. About three hundred 
manufacturing plants were built in a short time, 
and their produce greatly reduced the import. 
Progress took everywhere a tangible form. Agri- 
cultural schools were founded and schools to 

teach forestry and mining sprung up in a short 



178 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

time. A productive revenue and a regular army 
were established. The government revenue 
doubled in a short time, the fatal law of unanim- 
ity was branded as an instrument of Eussian pol- 
icy, and, as a consequence, no delegate was found 
daring enough to use it. 

The vigorous social and economic uplift that 
went parallel with the educational progress, of- 
fers the finest specimen of the nation's reserved 
store of strength and vitality. The various indus- 
tries did much in the way of bridging the tradi- 
tional chasm that separated the nobility from the 
lower classes. Noblemen engaged in business. 
Banks began to flourish and commerce received 
royal help and encouragement. Koads were built 
and repaired, and special state departments were 
instituted to look after their condition. Rivers 
were dredged and widened and canals built. Po- 
lish manufactured goods made their appearance 
in foreign markets. 

While these excellent symptoms of public sense 
and power were in evidence, the Great Diet as- 
sembled in Warsaw to frame a new constitution, 
which was a crowning work to the foregoing re- 



Measures and Progress. 179 

forms. The four years when the constitution was 
discussed and drafted constituted the finest exam- 
ple of wisdom and integrity, patriotic duty and 
devotedness to principles that ever animated a 
national assembly. And Poland achieved her re- 
forms under the greatest external disadvantages, 
but yet quietly and without the rattle of the guil- 
lotine and the clash of fratricidal swords. While 
the last partition had not yet taken place, Poland 
was the most liberally governed country in 
Europe. 

One of the most encouraging phases about the 
Polish life for last century or more is the fact 
that the Poles have lived and developed in the 
spirit of their Constitution of the 3rd of May, 
that they increased numerically by half, and that 
they developed economically and industrially. 
Conformable to the Constitution which paved the 
way between the nobility and the peasants, and, 
of coursje, as an offset to the exterminative policy 
of their enemy, the Poles developed a middle class 
that constitutes a real backbone to their national 
and economic life. 



180 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



It is a compelling fact that in the more recent 
history of dismembered Poland, that the Poles 
retaliated every political deprivation with eco- 
nomic and industrial organizations. This is espe- 
cially true of the Poles under Prussia, where the 
anti-Polish pressure was heaviest. Every drastic 
measure the German government advanced 
against them, the Poles answered by organizing 
more co-operative societies and starting a more 
thorough boycott of German goods. The war 
Prussia waged on the Polish nationality for the 
last century and more resulted in a phenomenal 
growth of Polish co-operative stores and co-oper- 
ative societies. The Province of Posen presents 
one network of well-organized and efficient Polish 
co-operative societies. The agricultural circles 
are especially remarkable for their numbers, as 
they exist in almost every village. The Polish 
organizations in the. Province of Posen form one 
large union, having a central bank, which opened 
business with 6,000,000 marks. Enough to say, 
the development of the middle class and the co- 
operative movement in the Province of Posen 
have been considered, even by Prussians, the 



Measures and Progress. 181 



healthiest symptoms of the Polish social life. 
Galicia and the Kingdom followed suit and built 
up numerous co-operative societies and corpora- 
tions, modeled after those in Posen. They proved 
of immense advantage in dealing with the relief 
of hunger and suffering in the war. 

Modern Poland is no longer the country of 
knight-errants, of excessive idealism and of free- 
dom, and too ready to give up her industry and 
her business into foreign hands. She is — she was 
before the war — a thickly populated and in- 
dustrially prosperous — a thoroughly modern 
nation with a middle class that is to play an im- 
portant part in her future. 

With their progress in industry and agricul- 
ture, arts and sciences, wealth and numbers, the 
Poles have developed a strong middle class. The 
Polish middle man came into prominence in town 
and village. Deprived of land, the Pole went to 
the city and made good there. Excluded from 
official positions, he took to business and made 
success. He held the struggle to a successful 
issue. 



182 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



In their struggle for existence and conform- 
able to the spirit of the Constitution of the 3rd 
of May, the Poles have replaced their superfluous 
idealism by a practical materialism. They have 
adopted much of the Saxon practicality. 

Along with their numerical increase and their 
tenacity in remaining a persistent national type, 
the Poles have progressed materially, and have 
adapted themselves to the commercial spirit in 
an effort to improve their prospects. The young 
and well educated generation of Poles today 
forms the finest asset to the nation and presents 
healthy symptoms of national and economic 
strength and vigor. 



Chapter XII. 

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR IN POLAND. 

^^The star-spangled banner was thrown to the 
breeze from every public edifice, from every 
church steeple, and almost from every house; 
and from the mighty heart of all the free states 
rung out the battle cry: '^The Union must and 
shall be preserved: 



V 



— Brownson in July, 1861. 

The history of the American Civil War is the 
history of the partition of Poland. Periods of 
great patriotic activity were followed by periods 
of inactivity and disorganization. The crises in- 
evitably followed. In Poland, the partitions; in 
the United States, the Civil War. They were 
truly fatal blows to the respective countries. 
But, again, they were salutary blows, as they 
gave rise to strong patriotic awakenings and vig- 
orous national regenerations. There is this not- 
able difference, however, that, while the causes 
which led to the American Civil War, were inter- 



184 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

nal, those which contributed to the partition of 
Poland were principally external; and while the 
United States, unhampered by any external pow- 
ers, was allowed to rise and reform, Poland's 
reformatory measures were meanly frustrated by 
the selfish interests of the neighboring powers. 
In neither case did the national crisis show an 
absence of governmental ability. Rather, it af- 
forded an excellent test of national strength and 
vitality. 

Nations have their periods of prosperity and 
periods of apparent decadence. Poland of the 
sixteenth century was at the height of power 
and glory. She was renowned for her warriors 
and her scholars ; for her advanced political ideals 
and her fair-minded tolerance. Wealth and afflu- 
ence, refinement and gentility, characterized the 
representative classes. Then Poland was "the 
most civilized country of Europe"^ and the 
"Greatest Mid-European Commonwealth." Whole- 
some patriotism and genuine religious fervor per- 
vaded all classes, uniting them into an insuper- 
able body. Poland was the then United States 

* Moltke — Account of Affairs and of the Social Conditions 
in Poland. 



American Civil War in Poland. 185 



of Europe — the harbor and asylum of all peo- 
ples. When Sobieski led his invincible hussars 
to Vienna, Europe was sure that there was noth- 
ing to fear from the Turk. 

A reaction followed. Poland began to weaken. 
The nobility assumed too much power at the 
expense of the Crown and to the detriment of the 
centralized authority which constituted the cor- 
ner stone to the strength of Russia and Prussia. 
The Poles were a republican people. The Polish 
kings were elected by vote. There were often sev- 
eral candidates for king supported by their par- 
ties. Dissensions would often follow the same 
way as they follow in any modern republican 
state. There was also a gradual ebb of that gen- 
uine patriotism which characterized the Poles 
of the sixteenth century. The law of unanimity 
became a powerful factor in the hands of foreign 
powers, especially of Catherine of Russia, in frus- 
trating pressing reforms. The treasury was 
empty ; the army allowed much room for improve- 
ment and ill-compared with that of Russia and 
Prussia. Individual good was often preferred to 

the good of the State. 



186 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

A like situation obtained in the United States 
for the fifty years before the outbreak of the 
Civil War. If in Poland the negative climax 
was reached in the form of the partitions, in the 
United States, the Civil War was the inevitable 
result of the adverse political conditions that 
gnawed the very vitals of the new republic. 

Principles, wholly subsersive of the integrity 
of the American Eepublic, had developed for a 
half century prior to the Civil War. Was the 
United States to be a union, one and inseparable, 
a country of Freedom and Independence — or was 
it to be a South and a North, a land of slaves 
and lords, as if to mock the very principles on 
which the Great Eepublic was founded? This 
was the issue the United States faced in 1861. 

The United States was fast becoming a land 
of slavery while boasting of freedom. The South 
began to dominate the North. The North was 
in constant clash with the South. Any construc- 
tive measure adopted by the North was consid- 
ered by the South as unjust and aggressive. 
Threats of secession would inevitably follow. 
There were political factions then in the United 



American Civil War in Poland. 187 

States, worse perhaps than in Poland before the 
partitions. Buchanan's administration brought 
the country to the verge of ruin. The Saxon kings 
of Poland did as much for Poland as Buchanan 
did for the United States. Perhaps he was as 
helpless against the onrushing tide of national de- 
cadence as the Saxon kings were powerless in 
arresting the vices that were ruining Poland. 

Political affairs in the United States at this 
time were identical with those of Poland before 
the partitions. There was no decided adhesion 
to President Lincoln even among the Republicans 
who elected him President. In the one country 
and in the other, the decrease in patriotism mul- 
tiplied those who stood ready to advance private 
interest at the expense of the government. The 
treasury of the United States was in no better 
condition than was that of Poland before the 
first partition. The government credit was low. 
The Federal army was dispersed and ill organ- 
ized. The people as a whole were too much intent 
on trade and speculations to occupy their minds 
with the political conditions of their country. 
Not unlike the Poles before the partitions, they 



188 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

grew selfish and little capable of any disinterested 
patriotic effort. The future looked anything but 
encouraging. Such was the state of the Union 
when the rebels bombarded Fort Sumter. A true 
parallel to the conditions in Poland when the 
first partition became a historical fact. 

The parallel continues, only it takes now a 
positive course. The Civil War and the parti- 
tions were occasions of national regnerations. 
The rise of the South, transformed the Unionists 
into the patriots who wrote and signed the Con- 
stitution, who declared that all men are created 
equal, who defended their national rights and 
founded the greatest republic since Greece and 
Rome. A warmth of intense patriotism per- 
meated the masses and united them together. 
"The Union must and shall be preserved," was 
the inspiring watchword of 1861. The treasury 
was speedily replenished. The call of the Presi- 
dent for 75,000 men to defend the Union was 
answered by the presence of upwards of half a 
million men. Money was voted by states and 
municipalities for the cause of the Union. Party 
lines were obliterated. Divisions gave way to 



American Civil War in Poland. 189 

union and solidarity. Disinterested patriotism 
animated all classes. It appeared as though the 
Unionists did too much for the short time. They 
showed themselves a strong and vital people with 
energy and ardor and a brilliant future in store 
for them. 

The crisis could not be avoided. The war had 
to be fought. The South had to yield. The South- 
ern domination and the Northern servility were 
un-American. The United States had to be 
taught a lesson through the Civil War. But the 
American people were not the less capable of self- 
government. Such periods of disorganization 
may happen in the history of any people. They 
cannot be censured for allowing the conditions 
that brought the war; they cannot be considered 
Ijolitically inert for their fifty years of decadent 
life. They should rather be considered the more 
able to govern self for the reformatory measures 
they took to preserve and safeguard the integrity 
of their country. 

The first partition of their country brought the 
Poles to a distinct recognition of self. They real- 
ized the danger and at once took vigorous meas- 
ures to ward it off. 



190 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

The partition gave occasion to such speedy po- 
litical and economic reforms as to this day com- 
pel the attention of statesmen. Poland could 
not be politically dormant and socially senile for 
the Commission of Education she instilled, and 
for the other sweeping reforms she achieved. Po- 
land deserves more credit for her constructive 
measures following the first partition, than blame 
for not neutralizing in time the hurtful currents 
that weakened her government. 

The parallel is still evident. The Civil War 
made a greater people out of the Americans. The 
partitions made a greater people out of the Poles. 

It unified them and made them patriotic. Party 
divisions gave way to a broader acceptance of 
patriotic duty. 

When Brownson speaks of the United States 
after the Civil War as a nation which has been 
brought at once to a distinct recognition of self, 
and was forced to pass from a thoughtless, care- 
less, heedless, reckless, adolescence to grave and 
reflecting manhood, he incidentally describes 
Poland of the partition period. Both the coun- 
tries learned that freedom without order is impos- 



American Civil War in Poland. 191 

sible; that liberty is not to be understood as 
license; that unity means strength, and disrup- 
tion in government is tantamount to weakness 
and exposes a nation to danger; that military 
strength is to be respected as an indispensable 
factor in upholding the national honor. The 
Civil war and the partitions marked periods of 
disorganization, but they indicated no govern- 
mental incapacity. They were necessary to 
awaken their vitality, arouse their energy and 
patriotism, to recall them from the slumber into 
which wealth and prosperity had caused them to 
be sunk. No other people have done greater re- 
forms in so short a time. Neither people was 
decadent. Either possessed a vitality, strong and 
vigorous, though latent. Either people had a fu- 
ture before them. Both outgrew their adolescence 
and reached grave and reflecting manhood. 

Here the parallel ceases. While Poland was 
rising to a new life, her enemies united all the 
more to destroy her. Poland was not allowed to 
exist. Her trouble was of an external rather than 
internal nature. Poland was obliged to spend 
a great deal of her strength, which she could 
otherwise have used in self-reconstitution, resist- 



192 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ing the aggressive powers that decided on her 
partition. America was spared this expenditure 
of strength. Eussia, Prussia and Austria saw 
in the reforms republican Poland was achieving, 
a menace to their autocratic powers. They feared 
lest a free and popular government just across 
the border awakened their own people to a de- 
mand for similar freedom. 

America had no autocratic kingdoms to grow 
fearful of her freedom. Her freedom constituted 
no menace to any external powers. Not so with 
Poland. Poland's reforms proved a stumbling 
block to the rampant absolutism of Russia and 
Prussia. The Polish freedom was a ghost that 
continually troubled the peace of their mind. A 
liberal government could not be borne. It had 
to be done away with. It militated against the 
absolutism, at Poland's door. Poland had been 
suppressed, still further divided and robbed of 
that independence and freedom which could well 
serve an object lesson to her usurpers. Suppose 

America, during her Civil War, surrounded by 

Russia, Prussia and Austria, all three eager to 

divide her territory, all three looking for a pre- 



American Civil War in Poland, 193 



text to materialize their greed ; suppose that they 
interfered with the American affairs, fomented 
dissensions and disruptions in the government; 
that they actually divided the United States, and 
then falsified American history till it read that 
the "anarchy'' of the United States was the 
prime cause of its dismemberment, that because 
of it, the American people are incapable of self- 
government, you would have Poland's position ex- 
emplified. The supposed usurpers of the United 
States would write its history to suit their own 
ulterior purpose. They would tell the world that 
the United States was unable to self-govern, and 
that, therefore, it had to be divided among its 
neighbors. In this case there would today be no 
United States, the greatest of republics, no Amer- 
icans, the most progressive of peoples and fittest 
to self-govern. And the world would take it for 
granted that they were not able to govern them- 
selves. The United States would not survive 
because of its geographical position, because of 
its rapacious neighbors who united in crushing 
i(: in its crucial hour. Such, unfortunately, had 
been Poland's fate. 



Chapter XIII. 

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE THIRD OF 

MAY, 1791. 

^'The wisdom and liberality of the Polish gen- 
try, if they had not been defeated by atrocious 
and flagitious enemies, would, by a single act of 
legislation, have accomplished that fusion of the 
various orders of society, which it required the 
most propitious circumstances, in a long course 
of ages, to effect, in the freest and most happy 
of European nations.^' 

' — Sir James MacKintosh — An Account of the 
Partition of Poland — Edinburgh Review, 
Vol. XXXVII. 

The reformatory measures Poland undertook 
after the first partition, reached their climax 
in the declaration of the Constitution of the 3rd 
of May, 1791, which was the supreme act of the 
Polish nation to safeguard its integrity, and a 
clear indication of its deficiency could never be 
laid down as a cause of her downfall. No other 



Constitution of the Third of May. 195 

nation has ever achieved a more thorough politi- 
cal reform under similarly adverse circumstances 
as did Poland at the time of her partition. 

As a political power, Poland began to weaken 
at the early part of the eighteenth century. The 
eagerness with which the Poles seized upon reme 
dies resulted in the rise of two political schools 
in Poland. The one was monarchial with Arch- 
bishop Naruszewicz at its head. It endeavored 
to make Poland a monarchial power, as this 
alone, it held, would make her a strong centralis- 
tic state, and enable her to successfully cope with 
the despotic neighbors, who sought to find in the 
republic government of Poland a pretext for 
their encroachments. The other was more in 
keeping with the Polish political traditions and 
sought to reconstruct the old government by es- 
tablishing a constitution along modern lines. 
This republican party prudently sought to cur- 
tail the excessive privileges of the nobility, to be- 
stow more privileges on the lower classes, and to 
give them a vote. The two schools produced 
much political literature, but brought no prac- 
tical results to prove of immediate advantage 
to the state. 



196 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

It was not until the first partition brought the 
nation to distinct recognition of self, and Hugo 
Kollontaj returned to Poland from Eome, that 
things assumed a different shape. Kollontaj was 
a shrewd statesman and a man of the hour. Au 
advocate of democracy, he at once associated him- 
self with the republican school, and soon became 
its leader. A deep-sighted statesman, he was 
quick to perceive that what Poland really needed 
was a social and economical revolution in prepa- 
ration to a constitutional reform. With the 
Commission of Education and the many sweep- 
ing reforms in Poland preceding the declaration 
of the Constituion, Kollontaj's name was chiefly 
associated. 

Amid the excellent symptoms of public sense 
and temper Poland evinced at this time, the fa- 
mous Four Years' Diet assembled in Warsaw to 
draw up a new constitution. There has perhaps 
never been a popular assembly to contend with 
greater difi&culties both from without and from 
within. Still, it is safe to say that no popular 
assembly has ever displayed greater ability, pru- 
dence and moderation. The nation was in a 



Constitution of the Third of May. 197 



feverish state, and Europe at large was shaken 
with political convulsions. 

The United States had just thrown the Eng- 
lish yoke off its shoulder, fought and won the 
War of Independence. France was in the throes 
of the bloodiest revolution that ever ravaged a 
nation. Its echoes were heard the world over. It 
was a time when democracy made its first open 
stand against autocracy, and the political thought 
naturally presented the most alarming uncer- 
tainty. 

Kussia would never have allowed the Poles the 
least attempt to reform their constitution. But 
she became involved in a war with Turkey, a cir- 
cumstance which took her mind off the Polish 
question for a time at least. By the death of 
Frederick the Great (August 7, 1786), Europe 
suffered a serious derangement. Kussia formed 
with Austria an alliance against Turkey, and 
Prussia saw it prudent to make common cause 
with England and Holland as a counterpoise 
to the growing power of Russia. Frederick Wil- 
liam of Prussia, at the same time, sought to ally 
himself with Poland, and gave assurance that he 



198 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

would heartily welcome the projected rehabilita- 
tion of the Polish Constitution as that of a de- 
sirable ally. 

The withdrawal of the Russian troops from 
Poland, which were needed to fight the Turk, the 
suspension of the Russian espionage and the 
promising civil and economic reforms the Poles 
achieved, were factors to favorably react on the 
constitutional reform in Poland after the first 
partition. 

The Polish statesmen were for a time divided 
as to what form of government would prove of 
immediate advantage to Poland. Many Poles 
were disciples of Rousseau and insisted on Poland 
becoming more republican than she had been; 
many, again, were in favor of a strong mon- 
archial government. But a strong patriotic fer- 
vor permeated the assembly, and one party read- 
ily yielded to the other if only to reach the good 
of the State. The Dietines had the single mo- 
tive to remodel the Constituion, and to strengthen 
the nation against the threatened encroachments 
from without. They displayed a judgment, unity, 
deep foresight and political genius which to this 



Constitution of the Third of May. 199 

day show to what height a nation may rise, if 
actuated by patriotic motives. The reformers 
closely watched the progress of popular opinion 
and advanced no reformation till the public was 
ripe for its reception. Theirs was an extremely 
difficult task, as the spirit of the French revolu- 
tion was everywhere prevalent, and political prin- 
ciples were dangerously unsettled. 

The Constitution was drafted as early as De- 
cember 18, 1789, but, as the sentiment of the Diet 
was not ready for its acceptance, it was only 
May 3rd, 1791, that it was presented to, and 
passed by, the Diet, when King Stanislas signed 
it and swore to defend it. The Constitution was 
unfortunately short-lived, as Poland became 
shortly after, completely deprived of political 
being by the last partition, 1792. Foreign powers 
considered the Polish charter of popular rights 
extremely dangerous to their autocratic creed, 
and concerted in sealing Poland^s doom. 

It is important to remember today when the 

Polish question came so forcibly to the fore, and 
when positive and constructive qualities of the 
old Polish government must all the more dis- 



200 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



pose the world to hurry with the restoration of 
freedom to Poland, that no political body has 
ever achieved a more thorough reformation than 
did the Four Years Diet, 1788-1792. Its leaders, 
Kollontaj, Malachowski and Potocki were cap- 
able statesmen, and their measures were corre- 
spondingly vigorous. Whatever constitutional 
fault Poland labored under, it was more than 
remedied by the Constitution. Poland was made 
a strong hereditary constitutional monarchy, 
with a constitution based on the balance of power 
between the constituent elements of the body 
politic.^ 

The Koman Catholic religion was declared the 
state religion, but all religions within the Polish 
territories were to be tolerated. The Crown was 
to pass to the family of the elector of Saxony. 
The nation reserved to itself the right to choose 
a new race of kings, in case that family should 
become extinct. The executive power was vested 
in the king, who was to be advised and assisted 
by his ministers. The legislation was to consist 
of a Senate and the Chamber of Representatives, 

' W. Alison Phillips, M. A.— Poland, p. 76. 



Constitution of the Third of May. 201 

in which the legislative power was placed. The 
Liberum Veto was forever abolished, and, with 
it, were done away all those confederations and 
confederate diets which it had rendered necessary. 

Each considerable town received its franchise. 
The Burgesses were restored their rights of choos- 
ing their own magistrates. State offices were 
thrown open to them. The larger towns were 
given power to send deputies to the national as- 
sembly. They had also the right to take voice on 
local and commercial issues. 

Class distinctions were obliterated as far as 
possible. A bridge was thrown over the chasm 
separating the nobility from the lower classes. 
A powerful middle class began to develop as a 
result. Industry was given a free outlet. Every 
man was free to exercise any trade he pleased, 
and no nobleman was denobled by engaging in 
trade. Prejudice against industrial occupations 
was removed by embracing them. It was an old 
fault with Poland that the nobility claimed too 
many privileges at the expense of the lower 
classes. The Constitution fully remedied this 
evil. It not only put the Burgesses on equal foot- 



202 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ing with the nobility, but extended to the serfs 
full protection before the law. The strong lines 
of demarcation between the various classes were 
forever blotted out. 

The constitution was an epochal document both 
for Poland and for Europe at large. The prin- 
cipal rulers and statesmen of the day joyfully 
welcomed the new charter of popular rights. The 
French National Assembly acclaimed it with sin- 
cere enthusiasm. "In France/' said Baron 
d'Escare/ "to gain liberty, they began with an- 
archy; in Poland, the law for person and prop- 
erty was assured, and all this without violence, 
without murder, solely through the virtue of the 
courage of the nation, which, realizing his mis- 
fortune and her error, knew how to heal her 
wounds." Frederick William II of Prussia ten- 
dered his good wishes in favor of the new Consti- 
tution in a letter to the King, shortly after its 
promulgation : "I congratulate^ myself on having 
in my power to contribute to maintain the lib- 
erty and independence of the Polish nation; and 

' Quoted by C. Gonski in "Free Poland," Vol. II, No. 6. 
'' Quoted by L. C. Saxton~"Fall of Poland," p. 364. 



Constitution of the Third of May. 203 



one of my most pleasing cares will be to support 
and draw closer the bond which unites us." Leo- 
pold of Austria offered it his fullest endorsement. 
So pleased was he with it that he issued a proc- 
lamation to his Polish subjects in Galicia, guar- 
anteeing them liberties equal to those assured in 
the constitution of the 3rd of May. "It is a 
work," said Fox, "in which every friend to reas- 
onable liberty must be sincerely interested." 
"Humanity," exclaimed Burke, "must rejoice and 
glory when it considers the change in Poland." 
All Europe welcomed the Constitution, and show- 
ered congratulations upon the Polish statesmen.. 
The world at large was in full sympathy with the 
Polish charter of freedom. For the Polish Con- 
stitution was a beacon of freedom to all oppressed 
peoples. Then the world admired the vigorous 
vitality of the Poles and paid a noble tribute to 
their statesmen. Then the world esteemed the 
high virtue of Polish citizenship, Polish loyalty 
to principles and Polish unity, in trying to pre- 
serve national dignity, for the same reason that 
it admired the courage, fortitude and statesman- 
ship of the American colonists, when they pro- 



204 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

claimed the American Constitution and declared 
the War of Independence under conditions that 
spelled equally life or death to infant America. 

By creating the Constitution of the 3rd of May, 
the Polish nation rose, of its own strength, to 
a height of political eminence then attained only 
by a few nations. If not the temporary political 
, retrogression, which was then common to all na- 
tions, but the successful effort to remedy their 
political life, should decide of the political effi- 
ciency of a people, then the fitness of the Poles 
to self-govenrment could never be doubted. A 
nation lacking in political fitness could never pro- 
duce a constitution like that of the 3rd of May. 
A Constitution like that of the 3rd of May could 
not have come from a dissensions and rebellious 
people, and could never have been given birth to 
in a country where "anarchy" eternally prevailed. 
It could not have emanated from a people lacking 
in political aptness and unable to self-govern. 

One of the finest examples of American states- 
manship and the fitness of the Americans to gov- 
ern themselves is their Constitution, which is 
the greatest institution of a freedom-loving peo- 



Constitution of the Third of May. 205 



pie. For the political genius it embodies, the 
American Constitution has been the pride and 
boast of American statesmanship. The Poles 
drew a like Constitution. At the time of the par- 
titions, the Poles were other American colonists, 
asserting their inalienable rights to a continued 
existence and a self-government. They were im- 
bued with the self-same motives ; they had the self- 
same purpose and they labored under the self- 
same adversities. But, unfortunately, the exter- 
nal pressure was too strong for Poland to resist. 
The Poles were reduced to slavery and acclaimed 
by the enemy that they were not able to self- 
govern. 

Many historians rightly assert that the repub- 
lican form of government was too early for Po- 
land, as it would be too early for any nation under 
similar circumstances; that Poland was too pro- 
gressive for her time, which was bound to prove 
injurious to her national integrity. But that Po- 
land should prove equal to the establishment of a 
constitution like that of the 3rd of May at a time 
when mortal wounds have been inflicted to her by 
the first two partitions, when external greed was 



206 Poland in the World of Democracy, 

resorting to every possible means to seize the rest 
of her territory, when Eussian gold flooded the 
country to create anarchy and dissensions in the 
territorially crippled state, that Poland should 
be equal to the creation of her constitution with- 
out being dishonored by popular tumult, by san- 
guinary excesses, by political executions; that 
the Poles should have been able to present us, 
to paraphrase Sir James MacKintosh, with a 
most signal example of patience, moderation, wis- 
dom and integrity in popular assembly, that their 
Constitution should be considered a masterpiece 
in political science with the unbounded endorse- 
ment by the leading statesmen of the age, that 
the wisdom and liberality of the Polish gentry, 
if they had not been defeated by atrocious and 
flagitious enemies, would, by a single act of leg- 
islation, have accomplished that fusion of the va- 
rious orders of society which it required the most 
propitious circumstances, in a long course of 
ages, to that effect, in the freest and most happy 
European nation, that Poland was able to ac- 



Constitution of the Third of May. 207 

complish this, we will leave to the consideration 
of those who are too ready to fling upon the Poles 
the "encomium'^ that they are unable to self- 
govern. 



Chapter XIV. 

KESULTS OF THE PARTITIONS. 

''When I have heen long dead, the consequences 
of this violation of all that until now has heen 
deemed holy and just will have heen experienced. 



V 



— Maria Theresa — After she had signed the Par- 
tition of Poland. 

''The Partition of Poland was worse than a 
crime — it was a folly J^ 

— Talleyrand — After the Congress of Vienna. 

"Philip II and Louis XIV had often violated 
the law of nations; hut the spoilers of Poland 
overthrew itJ^ 

—Sir James MacKintosh — An Account of the 
Partitions of Poland — Edinburgh Review, 
Vol. XXXVII. 

The wanton spoliation of Poland as a society, 
alone capable of insuring happiness and well- 
being to her subjects, with her constructive in- 
fluence upon other nations, could not remain 



Results of the Partitions. 209 

without evil results, both internal and external 
to the nation For ten centuries untiring contrib- 
utors to civilization, both the reason of their in- 
tellectual competency coupled with religious de- 
votedness, and their chivalry which time and 
again had saved Europe from the Asiatic in- 
vasions, the Poles have been deprived of independ- 
ence, but not destroyed racially. There resulted 
no good from the partition of republican Poland ; 
on the contrary, its evil consequences have been 
felt to this day. Poland was a vital unit in the 
family of nations, and its violent dismemberment 
made Europe a permanent cripple. 

The political enslavement of Poland brought 
untold sufferings upon her people. It created an 
unceasing trouble to the usurper who could not 
assimilate them, despite frantic measures. It 
destroyed the balance of power among the Euro- 
pean nations. It did slwslj with the buffer state 
between the East and the West, Poland con- 
tinued to be for nine centuries. The unparalleled 
disaster which befell Poland in the war is, in the 
largest measure, due to the partition. But one 
thing the partition has failed to do; to destroy 



210 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

the Polish nation and to destroy their right to 
self-government 

When Napoleon, in the memoirs he wrote at 
St. Helena, said that Poland constitutes the key 
of Europe, he implied that her absence as a po- 
litical entity would continue hurting it. Talley- 
rand expressed the same truth when he said: 
"The partition of Poland was worse than a crime 
— it was a folly." Marie Theresa of Austria, who 
was an accomplice to the partition, appeared to 
foresee the blightf ul consequences the dismember- 
ment of Poland would bring when she exclaimed : 
"When I have been long dead, the consequences 
of this violation of all that until now has been 
deemed holy and just will have been experienced." 
Sir James MacKintosh^ pictured the external 
consequences of the partition in more vivid terms : 
"Till the first partition," he says, "the sacredness 
of ancient possessions, the right of the people to 
its own soil, were universally regarded as the 
guardian principles of European independence. 
They gained strength from that progress of civi- 

*An account of the Partitions of Poland — Edinburgh Re- 
view, Vol. XXXVII. 



Results of the Partitions. 211 



lization, which they protected and secured; and 
the violation of them to a great degree seemed to 
be effectually precluded by the jealousies of great 
states and by the wise combinations of the smaller 
communities. Confederacies were formed, long 
wars were carried on, to prevent the dangerous 
aggrandizement of states by legitimate conquest. 
To prevent a nation from acquiring the power 
of doing wrong to others, was a great object of 
negotiation and war. These principles were just 
and wise; as the preservation of the balance of 
power was, in truth, the only effectual security 
of all independent nations against oppression. 
But in the case of Poland, a nation was robbed 
of its ancient territory without the pretense of 
any wrong which could justify war, without even 
those forms of war, which could bestow on the 
acquisition the name of conquest. It was not 
an attack on the balance of power — the great out- 
work of national independence; it was the de- 
struction of national independence itself. It is a 
cruel and bitter aggravation of this calamity that 
the crime was perpetuated under the pretense of 
the wise and just principle of maintaining the 



212 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

equilibrium — as if that principle had any value 
by its tendency to prevent such crimes — as if an 
equal division of the booty bore only resemblance 
to a joint exertion to prevent the robbery. But 
in truth, the equality of the Partition did not hin- 
der it from being the very worst and most dan- 
gerous disturbance of the balance of power. It 
left the balance between three powerful states, 
as it was before. But it destroyed the balance 
between the strong and the weak. It strength- 
ened the strong; and it taught them how to ren- 
der their strength irresistibly by combination. In 
the case of private highwaymen, and pirates, a 
fair division of the booty tends, no doubt, to the 
harmony of the gang and the safety of its mem- 
bers, but renders them more formidable to the 
honest and peaceable part of mankind." 

Then follows a still more vivid picture of the 
effects of the dismemberment : "The Partition of 
Poland was the model of all those acts of rapine 
which have been committed by monarchs or re- 
publicans during the wars excited by the French 
Revolution. No single cause has contributed so 
much to alienate mankind from ancient institu- 



Results of the Partitions. 213 



tions and loosen their respect for established Gov- 
ernments. When monarchs show so signal a dis- 
regard to immemorial possession and legal right, 
it is vain for them to hope that subjects will not 
copy the precedent. The law of nations is a code 
without tribunals, without ministers, and with- 
out arms, which rests only on a general opinion 
of its usefulness, and on the influence of that 
opinion in the councils of States, and most of 
all, perhaps on a habitual reverence, produced 
by the constant appeal to rules even by 
those who did not observe them, and 
strengthened by the elaborate artifice to 
which the proudest tyrants designed to submit, in 
their attempts to elude an authority which they 
did not dare to dispute. One signal triumph over 
which an authority was sufficient to destroy its 
power. Philip II and Louis XIV had often vio- 
lated the law of nations; but the spoilers of Po- 
land overthrew it.'' 

Antonio Russo^ in his masterly article on the 
necessity of Poland expresses the self-same truth 
in the light of the recent European development : 

1 Italy for the Reconstruction of Poland (L'Eloquenza), p. 9. 



214 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

"The partition of Poland a century and a half 
ago was not a national catastrophe, but still more 
a deplorable event for the whole of Europe. * * * 
The consequences of the partition of Poland left 
their mark on the history of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. After the factitious calm arranged by the 
Congress of Vienna, the European political sys- 
tem, being unable to find a stable footing, was 
subject to the most violent explosions : The Cri- 
mean War, the Austro-Turkish War, the Franco- 
German War and the Eusso-Turkish War. Con- 
tinental rivalries prevented peace. * * * ^o 
attempt to establish a just balance of political 
power could be crowned with success, because 
the entire of Europe, the organic factor placed 
there by the laws of history was missing ; in other 
words, Poland was wanting." 

But the rape of Poland has never been so 
clearly brought home to the world as in the war. 
The suppression of Poland as a political power 
has admittedly been a loss to humanity. The 
Poles are a vigorous race, and if under the mael- 
strom of repressive measures they have contrib- 
uted to the general fund of civilization, it is safe 



Results of the Partitions. 215 

to say that their contribution would have been 
more than double, had they been allowed to live 
politically. Civilization would have been a de- 
cided gainer. Humanity would have been better 
off. A strong and united Poland would have con- 
tinued throwing forth that effulgent ray of soli- 
darity, toleration and respect for the rights of 
others which characterized her long history. Un- 
partitioned Poland would have furnished no an- 
tecedent to the oppression of the smaller by the 
greater nationalities. Gentle, tolerant, demo- 
cratic, almost feminine in dealing with her neigh- 
bors, Poland would have exercised a moderating 
influence upon her militaristic and bureaucratic 
neighbors. 

The war brought home the truth that an inde- 
pendent Poland would constitute an element of 
peace in the future balance in Europe, and placed 
as she is, in the center of the continent, she 
would exercise a moderating influence in the con- 
flict between the races who struggle for predomi- 
nance. This is one reason why public opinion 
has asserted itself for a reconstructed Poland, 
and even the powers, who once brought ruin upon 



216 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



the kingdom, are endeavoring to proclaim its 
freedom. Even they admit the right of Poland 
to self-government. Even they acknowledged the 
detriment they have suffered from the destruction 
of Poland as a political entity. They, too, have 
realized that the political reconstitution of the 
Polish nation into a free and independent state 
would be a new and extremely strong element of 
equilibrium, because it would constitute a buffer 
to deaden the conflict between the two rival pow- 
ers, Germany and Kussia. The Polish question 
will not be allowed to pass in silence, in the face 
of the fact that even her usurpers, after a century 
and a half of persecution, recognized their wrong 
and wished to repair it, and in the face of the 
strongest certainty that all the Poles, reunited 
in one free state, would be able to develop their 
admirable virtues, which until now have been 
checked. 

The reverses and suffering the partition 
brought upon the Poles have no parallel in his- 
tory. Still, the Polish nation has not been con- 
quered in the least. It has been subjected to a 
slow and languishing death, it has been admin- 



Results of the Partitions. 217 



istered Prussian medicine to die, it has been fed 
on "Kultur'' till it almost choked, but, strange 
enough, it has grown stronger on its very death- 
bed. It would not succumb. No persecution 
could weaken it. Its virile vitality was a fine 
antidote to the Prussian Kultur. Its ancient 
heart would continue beating, no matter how 
often pierced by poisoned Prussian darts. The 
Polish nation grew, expanded, became more viru- 
lent, more vital. Nothing could overthrow it. 
It grew stronger under the lash of the usurpers. 
They would not believe that a race or nation 
could not be eradicated without an almost total 
extinction of the people. They would apply more 
repressive measures, but the Polish nation would 
not down. And thus followed that life-and-death 
struggle which made the usurpers continuous 
murderers and the Poles permanent martyrs. The 
more the usurper persecuted them the more the 
Poles were willing to live. Eussia feared lest 
the Poles so thrive as to absorb her, and so she 
ordered new persecutions. Prussia could not 
imagine herself safe as long as the Polish popula- 
tion on the Eastern frontiers has not been assim- 



218 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ilated or extirpated. But it could accomplish 
neither of the two. The Poles became objects of 
the absorbing aggrandizement of their usurpers. 
Their dignity as a separate and homogenous peo- 
ple has never been consulted. They were doomed 
to destruction. The very means which for more 
than ten centuries have contributed to make them 
a happy and prosperous people, were turned into 
those of oppression and anihilation. Catherine's 
imperial command to her Cossacks, "We order 
that this invasion forever destroy the Polish 
race," is a classic example of what the Russian 
policy towards the Poles has been. In civiliza- 
tion, religion and political ideals, the Poles had 
nothing in common with the Russians. But Rus- 
sia, of course, would not consider this. The Mus- 
covite was to be supreme, and one ideal, the Mus- 
covite ideal, was to prevail throughout the whole 
empire. Naturally, the republican and tolerant 
Poles could not bear the indignities of despotic 
Russia, and when they rose in vindication of their 
rights they were brought down to their knees by 
the knout. The immediate result were scenes of 
death and oppression that baffle description. 



Results of the Partitions. 219 



We are afraid to touch upon what the parti- 
tions brought upon the Poles under Prussia. 
There the Poles would possibly suffer less than 
they did under Eussia, had Prussia's strange po- 
litical doctrine not constrained her to adopt the 
most radical measures to exterminate the Poles, 
and had the deep patriotism and the strong vital- 
ity of the latter not urged them to the most stren- 
uous struggle for existence. English writers are 
agreed in condemning the Prussian anti-Polish 
policy in terms that need no interpretation. 
"Eussian domination," says Eomain EoUand, au- 
thor of Jean Christopher, "has often been cruelly 
heavy for the smaller nationalities which it has 
swallowed up. But how does it happen, Ger- 
mans, that the Poles prefer it to yours? Do you 
imagine that Europe is ignorant of the monstrous 
way in which you are exterminating the Polish 
race?" "England," says William Canon Barry, 
in the "Catholic Columbia," "has repented of 
their wrong to Catholic Ireland. Has Prussia 
so much as dreamed of taking her mailed first off 
Catholic Poland? They govern Poland by the 
jackboot ; and by the jackboot they would govern 
Ireland if destiny gave them a chance." 



220 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Writers such as these would perhaps allow a 
shadow of leniency with Prussia, could they stop 
to think that her anti-Polish policy has at any 
rate been in keeping with her political doctrines. 
The ambition of Prussia — the world need no 
longer be told of this — is boundless, and the ill- 
fortuned Poles have been caught in this mael- 
strom in consequence of the partition. Pan-Ger- 
manic schools advocate a unification of all people 
of Teutonic origin. Germany is a centralistic 
state and it suffers no foreign element. Every 
one must assume the German "Kultur.'' The 
Poles, of course, wished to stay Polish, and so 
Germany determined to do away with them. Ever 
since the partition, Germany has treated the Poles 
in a way she is ashamed of today. Imbued with 
the Bismarkian idea of centralism and the Pan- 
Germanic policy of expansion, Germany found 
herself ill at ease with the Polish question on 
hand. Germany held that her strength lies in 
unity, and she could not brook the Poles in the 
Province of Posen to remain radically Polish, 
fondling the hope of once forming part of a fu- 
ture Poland. In case of hostilities with Russia, 



Results of the Partitions. 221 

would the Poles of Posen not side with their 
Polish brethren under Russia? This question, 
German statesmen could solve only by saying: 
"Ausrotten the Poles/' Do away with the Poles. 
Exterminate them. Germany would, of course, 
consult the moral side of her action no more 
than she consulted the moral aspect of her war 
policy against Belgium. She appeared to be 
quite utilitarian. The Polish question, German 
statesmen admit, proved a hard nut for Germany 
to crack. But she resolved to crack it at what- 
ever cost, and the w^ay she wanted to crack it was 
to Germanize the Poles by forbidding them to 
speak in their mother tongue, by beating the Pol- 
ish children for refusing to answer catechism in 
the language they knew nothing about, by invest- 
ing capital and successfully competing with the 
Polish merchants and farmers, and by resorting 
to the Expropriation Act, which was to be the 
final and surest way of getting rid of the Poles. 
Perhaps Germany could not be blamed too much 
for her racial attitude, were it possible to lose 
sight of the moral side of her policy. But moral 
law and rights of peoples and nations are before 



222 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

any selfish aim and policy of government — a truth 
which Germany was given a chance to learn from 
America. A people, like an individual, has a 
right to live. But in her all-absorbing zeal for 
strength and expansion, Germany forgot, even as 
she forgot that Americans have a right to travel 
on the high seas, and that they may not be out- 
raged with impunity, that the Poles had a God- 
given right of self-existence, that the character 
of the race could not be eradicated without de- 
stroying the people, and that all she would suc- 
ceed in accomplishing was to bring the world's 
hatred upon her. 

Perhaps a Hartmann could as readily propose 
to the German government : "Liberate the Poles" 
as "extirpate the Poles." But Prussia has some- 
how grown convinced that there is no true hap- 
piness beyond the pale of the "German Kultur," 
and, as a result, she had been so solicitous about 
transforming the Poles into Prussians, so eager 
to have them forget their sacred birthright as to 
have recourse to means that evoke a humorous 
smile of the world. Letters may not be addressed 
in the Polish ; a Pole wearing a Prussian uniform 



Results of the Partitions. 223 



may not speak in his own tongue with a comrade 
in the barracks ; the Polish is forbidden in public 
offices. At Polish meetings in all districts, where 
the Poles do not exceed 60 per cent of the pop- 
ulation, Polish language may not be used. Pol- 
ish towns are disguised by a Prussian veneer. 
The Poles may build a stable for cattle, but they 
dare not build a house to live in. He may repair 
the old house, but never build a new one. 

The words of Theresa of Austria, "When I have 
been long dead, the consequence of the violation 
of all that until now has been deemed holy and 
just, will be experienced,'' were truly prophetic. 
Many and painful were the sufferings which be- 
fell the Polish nation as a result of the partition 
before the war. But the suffering the war brought 
down on it is too appalling to suffer a parallel, 
and it is, in the largest measure, a terrible reac- 
tion of the crime of the partitions. Little did the 
usurpers realize that their nefarious crime would 
bring upon the people the woes and anguish that 
have never been inflicted upon mankind, that 
their crime should make the crime of Cain be 
repeated a million times; that Poland today 



224 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



should appall the world with a picture of the very 
Golgotha of undeserved suffering. Poland of old, 
it is true, had suffered much from the Eastern 
barbarians by reason of her geographic position. 
8he has been a threshold through which ravaging 
armies would pass. But undivided and having 
a ready army, she could defend her integrity. But 
divided and unprotected as she is today, consti- 
tuting of the very center between inimical na- 
tions, the huge armies of the belligerent countries 
have marched and remarched, pitched battles and 
drained the country of food supplies. Thrice the 
country has been shorn of its crops; thrice its 
cattle and farm stock have been seized by the 
one army or the other. Poland was looked upon 
as hostile to Germany; she was considered as 
hostile to Russia. Neither would pay regard to 
her welfare. The population has been dying by 
the thousands. Hunger has so ravaged the coun- 
try as to create a new malady among the starv- 
ing population unknown to medical science. It 
stripped the country of its children. "For every 
hundred births in Poland there are two hundred 
and forty deaths. A new malady has made its 



Results of the Partitions. 225 



appearance in the country — the terrible malady 
of hunger. Its symptoms preceding death are the 
bloating of the body and blindness.''^ Poland, a 
rich and fertile country, the very picture of 
wealth and plenteousness before the war, sud- 
denly assumed the appearance of a wilderness. 
Every inch of ground has been trampled by the 
foot of the armies. "The situation in Poland is 
appalling, where practically the entire population 
today is homeless, and where men, women and 
children are perishing by thousands for lack of 
shelter, clothing and food.''^ 

"I also beseech my prayers for Poland, which 
never attempted a war of conquest, but always 
fought for the liberty of people and for civiliza- 
tion. She is suffering more than we." ^ Belgium 
suffered no better fate than Poland. But the Bel- 
gians had at least the honor to die for their coun- 
try. The male population of Poland has been 
compelled to fight in the armies and for the in- 
terest of their oppressors. Once Poland could 

* Henryk Sienkiewicz to American Red Cross, November 
3rd, 1915. 

^ Proclamation by Woodrow Wilson, December 20th, 1915, 

From a letter by His Eminence, Cardinal Mercier, to 

the Belgians, November 15, 1916. 



226 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

have called her sons to defend her against the 
enemy. Today, she is only allowed to look in 
silence as they are being forced to engage in a 
fratricidal strife. The partition of Poland 
brought a woeful plight on the people. Never 
has a like disaster befallen any nation. The 
world is eager to understand the appalling trag- 
edy, but it is beyond understanding. Poland was 
drawn into the vortex of war by reason of her 
usurpers declaring war against each other. Po- 
land has no interest in the war. She was not 
responsible for the war. Yet she was made to 
bear the brunt of the war. An innocent victim, 
Poland has been nailed to the cross of the world- 
war. 



Chapter XV. 
THE ETHICAL MORAL RIGHT. 



(C 



^No peace can last, or ought to last, which does 
not recognize and accept the principle that gov- 
ernments derive all their just powers from the 
consent of the governed, and that no right any- 
where exists to hand people about from sov- 
ereignty as if they were property; * * * no na- 
tion should seek to extend its policy over any 
other nation or people, but that every people 
should be left free to determine its own policy, 
its own way of development, unhindered, un- 
threatened, unafraid, the little along with the 
great and powerful/ 



J? 



— President Wilson to the Senate, January 22, 
1917. 

Will the evil of the partitions be left unreme- 
died in the near future? Will Poland be made to 
continue divided? Will the Polish kingdom or 
republic, containing Polish elements, be not re- 
constituted, if only to forestall the unspeakable 



228 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

calamities she was made to suffer today? Will 
historical and political reasons not arouse the 
world to urge the restoration of the hopeless na- 
tion, and will moral and human reasons not 
arouse the conscience of the world to repentance 
if the Poles have not been restored their freedom? 
It must be remembered, now more than ever, 
that Poland had not fallen for lack of vitality. 
She possessed at the time of her partitions, a 
vigorous vitality which has been intensified by 
years of oppression. Poland has remained a vital 
nation — proud of its history and of its ideals — 
proud of its literature and of the service it ren- 
dered humanity. Poland was too proud to suc- 
cumb under oppression, possessed of too much 
vitality to become extinct, imbued with too high 
ideals to lose courage, too hopeful of her future 
rise to become despondent. All persecutions and 
coercive measures to destroy her have not so much 

as impaired her strength. Poland has all along 
been a classic symbol of Right oppressed by 
Might, the first of all rights, for nations as for 
individuals, the right of living. She has stood 
forth a martyr-nation, beaming with hopeful 



The Ethical Moral Right. 229 



youth and ancient glory. Poland would have suf- 
fered less had her poets and musicians not stirred 
her to an active life. They sang of her ancient 
prestige and her future rise — they awakened her 
spark of love of self into a fire of patriotism. 
They stirred her to an activity that created a 
surplus, intellectual and spiritual progress. 
They enlivened her to a degree unprecedented in 
any history save that of ancient Greece. Her 
patriots and statesmen taught her history and 
pointed out to her her future. They taught her 
her aims and ideals — defended her right of being, 
inspired her with a passionate religious feeling 
and ideal patriotism. And instead of her burial, 
the world beheld Poland gentle, sad, famine, si- 
lent in suffering but hopeful ; oppressed, but not 
subdued, and ideal, a picture of a nation rather 
than a nation, till poet Krasinski could say, "My 
country is to me not a home, a country, but it is 
both faith and religion,'' and: "Our wrongs are 
pointing to the resurrection, our lips are parted 
for the song of joy." 

An enthusiastic and high-spirited people, the 
Poles have bowed down beneath an intolerable 



230 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

present. They have always passionately clung 
to their language and their religion ; an energetic 
people, to whom every avenue of activity had 
been closed; a home-loving people, who had been 
evicted from their homestead; a people capable 
of self-government, to whom has been forbidden 
to take any part in government ; a people in full 
vigor of life, galled by language prohibitions, by 
a press censorship of the most rigorous descrip- 
tion, by the secret police, by imprisonment, by 
banishment to the mines, oppressed by a rule 
determined to crush every vestige of Polish na- 
tionality. Thus the Polish nation has been 
wasted, when it should have labored for the good 
of humanity — made to remain inert, when it 
should have been allowed to develop its virtues — 
kept in slavery, when it should have helped the 
advance of civilization, "We must picture to our- 
selves," says George Brandes,^ "a naturally very 
energetic people, against whose energy a barrier 
not to be broken down has been erected; a 
warlike people, who only reluctantly enter the 
army, in which practically no young man volun- 

* Pdand, p. 48. 



The Ethical Moral Right. 231 

tarily chooses the post of officer; an extremely 
ambitious people, to whom all high positions and 
offices are closed; and to whom all distinctions 
and demonstrations of honor are forbidden in 
so far as they are not bought with sacrifice of 
conviction or denial of solidarity with their coun- 
trymen; a people naturally hostile to Philistine 
ideas, but who needed to acquire the civic virtues 
and whose circumstances now give them constant 
encouragement to unsteadiness; a people with a 
lively, irresistible inclination to politics, for 
whom all politcal education had been made im- 
possible, because they are allowed neither to 
elicit representatives nor to discuss affairs of 
state, and whose political press is silenced on all 
political matters." 

Poland's right is the right of a nation to live 
and to expand along its national genius. It is 
a right of twenty-five million individuals, who 
speak a common language, recognize common his- 
torical antecedents and possess a verile national 
consciousness which expresses itself in literature, 
art, science and philosophy, peculiarly their own. 
It is a right of so many individuals to form a 



232 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

nation^ one and undivided, and "to determine^ 
their own policy their own way of development, 
unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid. * * *" 
They present their unprecedented situation, their 
vitality, grievances and wrongs of yesterday and 
today and ask: Have we no right to live? The 
Poles today speak to the world as a nation pos- 
sessing a strong feeling of its historical rights 
and persisting resolutely in reclaiming its inde- 
pendence. 

The Poles today present all the essentials of a 
youthful and energetic race, willing to live and 
labor for the betterment of humanity and the 
advancement of civilization. Their splendid his- 
tory, their intellectual progress, their political 
aptitude, their fortitude in suffering are in keep- 
ing with their elevated example of perseverance, 
faith in their ideals, constancy to convictions and 
principles, which have furnished an additional 
plea for the reconstruction of their country. 

The reconstruction of Poland is a world duty. 
It vitally concerns humanity at large. The par- 
tition was a wrong that must be righted, or there 

* President Wilson — Message to the Senate, January 22, 1917. 



The Ethical Moral Right. 233 



shall be no lasting peace in Europe. Poland, 
united again, would suddenly heal the old wounds 
from which flows the blood of a noble race and 
the strength of a powerful people. The recon- 
struction of Poland would mark a new era in 
the peace of the world. 

"Poland,'' says Louis Vallet-Duval, "a martyr 
at the beginning of the twentieth century and 
tyrannized over during the whole course of the 
war for justice and civilization, ought to be re- 
born at any price. The evolution of this country 
will be the last word. They had desired to kill 
this country, but what they did only was to 
awaken the conscience of a people. This nation 
which had formerly fought for civilization and 
saved humanity against the barbarians of the 
Levant, would remain immortal. Never had Po- 
land more vitality, more brilliance and charm. 
Rent asunder by the black eagles, the white 
eagles of Poland will rise like the phoenix of old. 
According to the beautiful prophecy of Lammen- 
nais, ^Sleep, O my Poland; what they call thy 
tomb is thy cradle!' A resurrection will come to 
pass and history will soon record the re-establish- 



234 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

ment of this country — the country of Jagiello, of 
Sobieski and Kosciuszko, will have well merited 
this emancipation, and eternal Poland, trium- 
phant and radiant mistress of her destinies, will 
resume her place in civilized Europe." 

The aspiratons of the Poles are those of an 
oppressed nation which is capable of self-govern- 
ment and has a right to be free and independent. 
They have suffered enough. They demand a self- 
government, as it alone can make them happy 
and prosperous. They resent the foreign rule 
which has done everything to annihilate them. 
They point with pride to their past and ask : Why 
should our civilization be thwarted by foreign 
powers? Our forefathers rendered a debt to civ- 
ilization which had remained unpaid. The Poles 
look to their ancient scholars, their universities, 
their rich and expressive language, their exub- 
erant literature and ask: Why should the ruth- 
less autocrat destroy the noble heritage our fore- 
fathers have for ages labored to acquire? They 
look with pride to their present-day writers and 
musicians, scientists and painters and ask : Why 
should a nation which produces men to enlighten 



The Ethical Moral Right. 235 

and entertain the world, be doomed to extinction? 
They look to their social progress, to their virile 
middle class of merchants and mechanics, 
of business men and journalists and ask: Why 
should we be denied the right of self-government? 

Justice strongly calls for a speedy restoration 
to Poland of the freedom and independence which 
God wishes every nation to possess, and which is 
conformable to the dignity and indispensable to 
the natural self-explications of a people. 

Poland shall rise. It is impossible to destroy 
a race — to annihilate the national spirit of a peo- 
ple just as it is impossible for men to destroy 
the plans of the Almighty. Providence ordained 
it that many and various peoples compose the 
human race, and the attempt to blot out a given 
people is tantamount to an attempt to interfere 
with God's very work. 

With a credit of their glorious past, with a com- 
petency to self-government and with their one 
idea and faith of their reunited kingdom which 
unites them into a strong, vital unit, the Poles 
today possess too much of that energy and vital- 
ity which make for national stability ^»d integ- 



236 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

rity, and which keep a race safe against destruc- 
tion from without. The Poles are sure that the 
end of the war will mark a new era of the inde- 
pendence of their country. They are sure that 
the recognized principles, that people should have 
the right to dispose of their own lot, requires a 
solution of the Polish problem by the reunion of 
the Polish provinces into one independent state — 
"that the present war,'' to quote Winston Churc- 
hill, the English statesman, "is to readjust the 
map of Europe according to the principles of na- 
tional and actual aspiration of races," and "that 
the restoration of Poland," as Luigi Luzatti,^ 
former president of the ministry of Italy, put it, 
"with its organization as a constitutional king- 
dom will be a reparation for an age-long martyr- 
dom, though but a partial expiation before God 
and history j ♦ * * that all the Poles, reunited 
in one free state, would be able to develop their 
admirable virtues, until now choked, and would 
make good the time wasted in slavery by helping 
the advance of civilization, * « ♦ and that 
when Poland has been freed, those who believed 

* Italy for the Reconstruction of Poland, p. XXV. 



The Ethical Moral Right. 237 



in the external principles of morality, liberty and 
democracy, while recalling the tragedies of the 
present war, will exclaim with a sigh of joy: 
^But at least Poland has been freed !^ " 



Chapter XVI. 

PRESIDENT WILSON, A CHAMPION OF 

THE POLISH CAUSE. 

"* * * Statesmen everywhere are agreed that 
there should he a united, independent and autono- 
mous Poland.'^ 

— President Wilson, to the Senate, January 22, 
1917. 

President Wilson's mention of Poland's right 
in his epoch-making address to the Senate, Jan- 
uary 22, 1917, forms the most inspiring event in 
the history of the Poles after the dismemberment 
of their country, and the most authoritative pro- 
nouncement on the Polish question for Ameri- 
cans. Never before had so valiant a champion of 
the right of nations and the representative of the 
greatest democratic people ever spoken of a 
united and independent Poland. Having laid 
down such broad principles as : "Equality of na- 
tions upon which peace must be founded, if it is 
to last, must be an equality of rights,'' and that, 
"no peace can last, or ought to last, which does 



President Wilson and the Polish Cause. 239 

not recognize and accept the principle that gov- 
ernments derive all their just powers from the 
consent of the governed, and that no right any- 
where exists to hand peoples about from sov- 
ereignty to sovereignty as if they were property," 
the President took Poland to illustrate the prin- 
ciples, and said that he takes it for granted that : 
^•statesmen everywhere are agreed that there 
should be a united, independent and autonomous 
Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security 
of life, of worship and of industrial and social 
development should be guaranteed to all peoples 
who lived hitherto under the power of govern- 
ments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to 
their own." 

For the last century and a half, Poland had 
ill luck with possible intercessors, and her warm- 
est hopes were often shattered by unfortunate 
turn of events. Nations and peoples who were 
otherwise friendly disposed towards Poland, had 
their own difficulties to contend with, and the 
assumption prevailed that it were safer to leave 
such problem as the settlement of the Polish ques- 
tion alone as long as it could be safely done so. 



^40 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



Of course, the unbroken solidarity of the Russian 
and the Prussian autocracies, so unanimous in 
their Polish policy, was the chief reason why the 
Polish problem had time and again been quietly 
put aside when favorable circumstances seemed 
specially staged in its favor. 

But the war has put the Polish question on the 
lips of the world. Since the day hostilities were 
struck, factors have been developing which had 
for their purpose the redemption of the smaller 
nationalities, and which concerted to work out 
a sweeping program for the liberation of Poland. 
While the strongest barrier of the Polish cause, 
the friendship between the Russian and the Prus- 
sian autocracies, has forever been dissolved, the 
possibilities of the war have crystalized into the 
clear issue of democracy, which became the shib- 
boleth of fully three-fourths of the world. 

Then the war sickened men with the profuse 
bloodshed, with the wanton destruction of inno- 
cent life on land and on the high seas, with the 
ruthless exploitation of human life for the im- 
perial gain and ambition. With all this the world 
identified autocracy and turned away with dis- 



President Wilson and the Polish Cause. 241 

gust from governments which thus nailed the 
world to the cross of such suffering. The con- 
science of the world awakened and inspired the 
collective will to create a remedy against a sim- 
ilar war in the future. Voices, first subdued, 
then loud, have been raised in the interest of the 
oppressed peoples as against the autocracies 
which would hold them slaves. Poland has been 
singled out as a country to which restitution was 
principally to be meted out. 

Meanwhile, the outrages which had been with 
impunity and with no protest on the part of pos- 
sible intercessors done to Poland since the par- 
titions, have been done to the world at large. 
Autocracy trampled every law and precept of 
mankind. It turned out to be a law by itself, 
threatening in its intent and ghastly in its execu- 
tion. It challenged democracy to the knife. Then 
rose a man, a worthy successor to Washington 
and Lincoln, freely elected by hundred million 
free Americans, to speak to the troubled world 
a new gospel, admirable in its purpose, lofty in 
its ideal and amazing in its purpose. 

President Wilson spoke in terms of American 



242 Poland in the World of DemoCraCV. 

ideals, American principles and American poli- 
cies. He spoke in terms of the principles of man- 
kind. In his historic words, as simple and ele- 
vating as the eternal verity of mankind, Justice, 
President Wilson has pointed out to the gasping 
world where lay the source of its trouble. His 
remedy was equal to the malady. Against the 
ruthless autocracy he proposed the suiting democ- 
racy. Against the exploitation of men by un- 
scrupulous rulers, he suggested: "Governments 
by the consent of the governed." The equipoise 
of power he would have superseded by equality 
of rights. "Organized rivalries" should, in his 
opinion, give place to "an organized common 
peace." To do away with the political bondage 
of peoples, he would apply the Monroe doctrine 
to the whole world and impress upon the men: 
"that no nation should seek to extend its policy 
over any other nation or people, but that every 
people should be left free to determine its own 
policy, its own way of development, unhindered, 
unthreatened, unafraid, the litle along with the 
great and the powerful." 

In this imposing program of democracy, the 



President Wilson and the Polish Cause. 243 

great President pointed out to Poland as a coun- 
try to which the principles he enunciated applied 
with special vigor and cogency, and which best 
deserved to be associated with the immortal doc- 
ument. For, if Poland had for centuries been a 
thoroughly democratic nation, she had been for 
the last century and more groaning under the 
heel of the very autocrat who brought America to 
war. Poland's cause has ever been the cause of 
democracy, as it has been that of the United 
States, and it is safe to say that Poland will not 
sooner become free and prosperous, the home of 
the free and the tolerant, till democracy has 
stricken every autocrat off his throne, and till 
popular governments have been set up. Poland's 
motto has ever been that which has so eloquently 
been brought out by the President: "Equal with 
Equals." She has ever put into practice the prin- 
ciple that "Governments derive all their just 
power from the consent of the governed," and 
that: "No right anywhere exists to hand people 
about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they 
were property." As late as 1830, Poland pos- 
sessed such a noted advocator of universal democ- 



244 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

racy as Joachim Lelewel, and it was in keeping 
with her political creed to organize at this time, 
such societies as was the Democratic Society in 
Paris, which became famous for its memorable 
appeal to mankind for a reunited Poland, For 
long centuries freedom and equality were cher- 
ished and defended in Poland in a way that Amer- 
ica could be proud of today. 

On January 22, 1917, in the Senate in Wash- 
ington, where the United States assembles in its 
representatives, American democracy spoke for 
the Polish democracy. Kindred ideals of the two 
nations were brought out in a way as they had 
never been brought out before. Never has there 
been so broad a statesman to identify their cause 
with the universal cause of democracy, to pro- 
scribe autocracy and to strike at the root of the 
Polish bondage. President Wilson's message to 
the world struck the Poles, as it did all liberty- 
loving people, with a whirl of enthusiasm. Polish 
students and the various fraternities in Warsaw 
had nearly succeeded in carrying away with them 
the American consulate in their joyful demon- 
strations, making the very invaders grow fearful. 



President Wilson and the Polish Cause. 245 



Polish societies in Paris drew up lengthy reso- 
lutions of thanks and gratitude in favor of the 
champion of national rights and of the Polish 
cause. American Poles surprised their President 
with the amount of telegrams they addressed to 
him in token of gratitude. 

The Poles have ever looked up to the United 
States as the most efficient factor to restore their 
freedom. Already their hope has been in part 
realized. In the hour of their supreme trial, the 
great democracy spoke in their favor through the 
mouth of its noble President. Already the Poles 
have been given a chance to welcome the message 
of the President as presaging a new era in their 
national life. Somehow, the Poles have grown 
certain that with the United States to back her 
claims, Poland is all the surer to reappear amons: 
the family of nations to work out her own destiny 
and to collaborate in the progress of mankind. 
From the day hostilities were struck, the Poles 
realized more clearly than it had generally been 
known that it were : ^'inconceivable that the peo- 
ple of the United States should play no part in 
that great enterprise," that for it "they have 



246 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

sought to prepare themselves of their policy and 
the approved practices of their government, ever 
since the days when they set up a new nation in 
the high and honorable hope that it might in all 
that it was and did show making the way to 
liberty." The Poles believed that the United 
States would "add their authority and their 
power to the authority and force of other nations 
to guarantee peace and justice throughout the 
world." 

The actual participation of the United States 
in the war to make justice and the democratic 
ideals triumph over barbarism and autocracy, 
had kindled a new ray of hope in the Polish 
breast. A participant in the war, the United 
States is bound to have a voice in the council 
of nations in the ultimate settlement of the Pol- 
ish question. The Poles realized the double debt 
they owed America and democracy, and, to pay 
it, they hurried to gather under the Stars and 
Stripes, under which once fought their great 
countrymen, Kosciuszko and Pulaski, with the 
watchword : "For your freedom and ours." They 
drew upon themselves the attention of high mil^ 



President Wilson and the Polish Cause. 247 

itary officials for the numbers and the fervor 
with which they rallied under the Stars and 
Stripes from the day America declared war on 
Germany. For, in serving America, they serve 
democracy, and become a factor in the abolish- 
ment of the autocracy which is hurtful to the 
principles of humanity, and which had martyred 
Poland even as it would martyr America had it 
a chance. 

The unparalleled message of the President was 
a blow in the faces of those belligerents who 
looked for conquest, for acquisition of territory, 
and for the dismemberment of their opponents. 
It was, in effect, a blow to the enemies of Poland's 
freedom. President Wilson has enunciated the 
principles of humanity and identified with them 
the cause of Poland. He spoke for "liberals, 
friends of humanity of every nation and of every 
program of liberty ♦ ♦ ♦ for the silent mass 
of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no 
place or opportunity to speak their real hearts 
out concerning the death and ruin they see to 
have come already upon the persons and the 
homes they hold most dear," and thus he spoke, 



248 Poland in the World of Democracy, 

in effect, of the Poles. President Wilson summed 
up American principles, which are in essence 
Polish principles, for which the American and 
the Pole fought and died. 

To the Americans, the President's speech to the 
Senate of January 22, 1917, is a pride of their 
lofty statesmanship. To the world at large, it is 
an eloquent message of the noblest principles for 
which men have ever bled and died. To democ- 
racy, it is a textbook. But to the Poles, it is a 
golden page in the history of their post-parti- 
tional period and a corner-stone to their recon- 
stituted country. 

Prussianized Germany may have stricken out 
in her official translation of the President's mes- 
sage the passage on Poland, together with other 
passages which conflicted with her avowed auto- 
cratic creed. But it matters nothing. As long 
as the world will last, men will study and admire 
the remarkable message of President Wilson and 
will read that : "Statesmen everywhere are agreed 
that there should be a united, independent and 
autonomous Poland.'' 



Chapter XVII. 

THE TWIN NATIONS. 

While the allied nations are agreed that free- 
dom and independence be given to all peoples, 
and while democracy is getting a stronger foot- 
hold, Ireland and Poland are approaching the 
court of justice and fair play. 

Ireland's cause is the cause of Poland, and 
Poland's cause is the cause of Ireland. Their 
joint cause is the cause of freedom and independ- 
ence and — democracy. If we claim that Ireland 
has a right to self-existence and self -development, 
that this right is in keeping with her national 
dignity, we assert the same of Poland. We can- 
not enumerate Poland's trials and triumphs, her 
ambitions and ideals and hopes, without enumer- 
ating those of Ireland. The struggle of Ireland, 
her sufferings and aspirations are one with those 
of Poland. Hand in hand, grown weary under 
the weight of centuries-old sufferings and trials, 
but alive to their inalienable rights, Ireland and 
Poland believe in the power of their most sacred 



250 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

and strongest of all right — the right of living and 
self-development. 

Their joint voice may not remain unheeded 
now, when democracy, like a huge wave, is roll- 
ing over the world. The voice of Ireland and 
Poland is the voice of two nations, which pos- 
sess the strongest feeling of their historical right, 
and present all the essentials of youthful and 
energetic races, alike able and willing to labor 
for the betterment of humanity and the advance- 
ment of civilization. 

"Twin Nations," is a fitting name to give Ire- 
land and Poland. Though not related racially, 
and territorially far apart, they are more alike 
for their religious and political life, for their gen- 
uine patriotism and their ardent hope of better 
future, than any other two nations. Their suf- 
ferings were the same ; their ideals are akin ; both 
yearn to be free and independent. Their national 
missions were the noblest; their national trials 
stand in a class all of their own. Both have un- 
justly been accused of not being able to self- 
govern. Both have erroneously been called tur- 
bulent people, for the same obvious reason, that 



The Twin Nations. 251 



both would at times justly rebel against the for- 
eign rule which would make them slaves. They 
have remained within the fortress of their na- 
tional soul, untainted and unconquerable. 

From the beginning the two nations entered 
upon a career peculiar to them alone. Their 
histories were not to be the histories of other 
nations. Their national development was to 
stand in total independence of that of other na- 
tions. Their common national sufferings were 
to win them the title of martyr nations. Their 
common histories have time and again been 
brought out in song and poetry. Historians 
have not failed to point out their likeness, while 
statesmen today are viewing their national de- 
velopment with great interest. 

It is interesting to note how the peculiar na- 
ture of their territories should so tend to shape 
the political development of the two people as 
to make them appear one. The Isle of Erin, cut 
off from the continent and surrounded by sea as 
if to guard it against foreign invasions, bears out 
no resemblance to Central-Europed Poland, con- 
stantly exposed to the deluging inroads of the 



252 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

Tartar and the Turk. But yet the relation of 
their territories to their national missions con- 
stitute the fundamental reason for their political 
oneness. 

God entrusted all nations with a peculiar mis- 
sion. The Jews were to preserve the primitive 
tradition; the Greeks, to realize the beautiful; 
the Romans, to develop the State. But Poland 
and Ireland were entrusted with the noblest of 
national missions; for Ireland was to teach the 
true faith, and Poland, to defend it. It is not 
hard to bring to light in how far their geograph- 
ical locations determined their political careers 
which were formally those of the fulfillment of 
their respective work. Ireland, the teacher, could 
not better prepare to discharge her mission than 
by spending long ages in preparation in the se- 
clusion of her territorial monastery. The Isle 
of Erin was a happy place for the Irish. They 
were fortunately free from all that hurtful influ- 
ence of thought and religion which easily found 
its way elsewhere, and attained to a relatively 
high civilization long before Greece and Rome 
rose to intellectual prominence. Their religion 



The Twin Nations. 253 



was free from such pagan abominations as char- 
acterized it elsewhere. Hence, the readiness and 
unflinching fervor with which the Irish embraced 
the true faith at the advent of their celebrated 
patron, St. Patrick. They were ripe for the re- 
ception of the true faith, more so, than any other 
people; for long before the gospel had been 
preached to them, they had developed a founda- 
tion, a substratum, for Christianity. 

But the influence Ireland's geographical posi- 
tion exerted upon her great mission is much 
clearer brought out long after she had become 
Christian. The Irish, once they received their 
faith, have never departed from it. They lived 
for themselves; they yielded to no foreign influ- 
ence, religious or social. The Irish considered 
that to be the best for them, what they developed 
among themselves. Hence, they had shown them- 
selves adverse to all influence of thought and re- 
ligion which in other countries wrought much per- 
version. Hence, Protestantism, which was eas- 
ily planted in the Scandinavian, and in fact, all 



254 Poland m the World of Democracy. 



the Northern countries, found no encouragement 
among them. Hence, all the persecutions they 
suffered failed of their end, and today, "the 
Irish,'' as Brownson puts it, "are fulfilling an 
important mission in evangelizing the world." 

But if Ireland's noble mission was to propagate 
Christianity, the equally noble mission of Poland 
was to defend it against the Infidel. Parsons^ 
has deservedly said of Poland: "Just as to the 
sword of France the Europe of the Early Middle 
Ages owed its escape from imminent Mussulman 
domination, so does modern Europe owe to Po- 
land the great fact that she is not today either 
Turkish or Muscovite," and: "Poland, during 
her pre-eminent existence repelled ninety-two 
Tartar invasions, any one of which, if successful, 
would have at least jeopardized the existence of 
European civilization." Poland's mission was no 
less determined by territorial position than was 
that of Ireland. But, unlike Ireland, Poland 
could not spend long ages in preparation; for 
central Europe was a hot-bed of never-ceasing 
migration of nations. 

Poland's appearance among the family of na- 

* History of the Polish Catholicity and the Russian 
"Orthodoxy." 



The Twin Nations. 255 

tions was surprisingly sudden and in keeping 
with her national mission. Two hostile powers 
were developing ; Christianity in the West and 
Infidelism in the Southeast. Either meant to 
destroy the other — the struggle was becoming in- 
evitable — the time was fast approaching when the 
two would enter a death-life struggle. It was 
Poland's mission to stand between them and keep 
them apart. 

It was not till the ninth century that Poland 
is first heard of as a kingdom. In the same cen- 
tury she received Christianity. In the eleventh 
century, under the indomitable Chrobry, Poland 
already became a dominant power, ready to un- 
dertake the arduous task of her mission — to de- 
fend Christendom against the Hun, the Tartar 
and the Turk. Poland rose at once — she could 
not undergo a long process of development, as did 
Ireland — her mission was of an instantaneous 
nature. The need of warding off the East from 
the West grew imminent, and Poland was called 
upon to perform the task. 

The Irish and the Polish are an agricultural 
rather than a commercial people. They are radi- 



256 Poland in the World of Democracy. 



cally opposed to the lust of power and world 
domination. Neither Ireland nor Poland had in 
their long record of history wronged or oppressed 
any nation. Neither had as much as attempted 
to rob any people of their sacred birthright of 
liberty. They had never raised their sword in 
an unjust cause. If Ireland and Poland ever 
unsheathed their swords, it was not to extend 
their power, to subjugate peoples, to carry ag- 
gressive warfare, but it was in the highest, the 
holiest and best of causes — the freedom of peo- 
ples and their own freedom, the Altar of God 
and the Altar of the nation. 

Ireland and Poland had never shown auto- 
cratic tendencies. They led a communal life. 
They had their kings, but they were really presi- 
dents elected by the people. They were the most 
democratic nations in their time. They had their 
civilization based on law enobled and made rich 
by their native genius and the culture of a free 
people. 

The Irish and the Polish are a liberty-loving 
people. Where liberty demands a service the 
Irish and the Polish are invariably found. Their 



The Twin Nations. 257 

common cause is the cause of freedom. Their 
uprisings had this single objective : to regain their 
freedom and independence of which they had 
been deprived. 

There has been an accusation heaped alike on 
the Irish as on the Polish, unjust as it is unten- 
able, that they are not able to self-govern be- 
cause they are lacking in that mutual compro- 
mise which characterizes other people and which 
is a necessary asset to order and a continuous 
existence of self-government — that, for this rea- 
son, the Irish and the Polish had better remained 
under foreign rule. 

A more unjust accusation has never been made 
against any people. Had the Irish and the Polish 
not actually governed well? Is their subjection 
consequent upon their inability to govern them- 
selves, or is perhaps the "alleged'^ inability to 
govern self consequent upon their subjection? 
The Irish had laws with power to enforce them. 
They had their chiefs and their judges, and the 
people respected them. There was peace and 
mutual concession among them then. They were 
a most peaceful people. The Brehon laws rival 



258 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

the Justinian code. Poland, too, had her laws 
and her republican government for centuries. 
The Poles were a law-abiding people. The laws 
of Casimir the Great were known for their equity 
and fittingness. The Constitution of the 3rd of 
May stands to this day a most perfect charter of 
the liberties of the people. Let Ireland be restored 
her government, and she will, as of old, not only 
be able to self-govern, but to serve an example to 
other people. Let Poland become free, and she 
will continue to preach her gospel of democracy 
and be a bulwark against the rampant lust for 
world power. 

No other two histories stand forth so conspic- 
uous for their likeness as do those of Ireland and 
Poland. If Ireland had her Elizabeth, Poland 
had her Catherine. If Ireland had her Henry 
VIII, Poland had her Bismarck. If Ireland had 
her deportations, Poland had them after her up- 
risings. If Ireland groaned under the Penal 
I^aws, Poland is suffering from the abject expro- 
priation act, which is the last alternative Prus- 
sian Germany seized to destroy the Polish race. 

Ireland is fitly called the "Isle of Saints." Per- 



The Twin Nations. 259 

haps no nation sent so many missionaries into 
foreign lands and more strongly adhered to the 
principles of faith than the gallant Irish nation. 
Poland has earned her epithet, the "Bulwark of 
Christendom," for her struggles against Asiatic 
races. Poland gave birth to a galantry of knights 
that are seldom found amidst other peoples — not 
the Caesar or Napoleon type, but true Christian 
knights, who fought, not to inflict pain, but to 
relieve mankind of suffering. Chrobry, Henry 
the Pious, Sobieski and Kosciuszko were Chris- 
tian soldiers who fought, not in self-interest, but 
in the interest of humanity. 

But it is their wonderful national indestruc- 
tibility that makes them alike more than anything 
else. No other two nations have been nearer the 
verge of total extinction. Still, though appar- 
ently crushed by tyranny and aggressive meas- 
ures, though for ages deprived of what is consid- 
ered the basis of nationality, self-government, the 
Irish and the Polish today exhibit an exuberant 
individuality, a distinct national character, a 
unanimity of feeling, a devotedness to principle 
and love for country and religion. 



260 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

The political life of the two countries had ad- 
mittedly been a singular one. It stands in com- 
plete independence of those of other nations. A 
mere summary of their histories establishes a po- 
litical parallel peculiar to them alone. Both Po- 
land and Ireland were independent nations. Both 
enjoyed their own constitutional laws. Both 
were autonomous nations. If Poland rose to 
greater political pre-eminence, it was perhaps 
because her mission demanded that she should 
occupy a prominent place in the family of Euro- 
pean nations. Had Poland not been a powerful 
kingdom, she would not have been able effica- 
ciously to stay the surging waves of the Turkish 
deluge. The mission Ireland was entrusted with 
was not of a nature to require her to rise to a 
political pre-eminence equal to that of Poland. 
She was to be the modest teacher rather than the 
indomitable warrior, holding in bridle the East- 
ern barbarians. 

Nothing succeeded in blighting their nation- 
ality. Today the Irish and the Polish are numeri- 
cally stronger than they ever had been. They 
exhibit an energizing vitality, which evidences 



The Twin Nations. 261 



itself in the vigorous growth of mental and spir- 
itual life, and if all the nefarious measures which 
have been launched against them accomplished 
anything, they consolidated them into insuper- 
able bodies, they enkindled in them a love for 
their country and made them strongly patriotic. 
All the persecutions which Poland and Ireland 
suffered produced the very opposite effect from 
the one intended by their usurpers. They made 
the Polish more Polish and Irish more Irish. 
They imbued them with an ineradicable senti- 
ment of nationality. If the Irish today possess 
their individuality as distinct as though they 
were ruled by the O^Neil dynasty, only that they 
are imbued with the greatest unity of feeling and 
devotedness to principles, the Polish today are 
certainly the very same as when ruled by the 
Piast dynasty ; by Chrobry the Great, Batory and 
Sobieski the Mighty. They are the very same as 
they were when they made that gallant fight for 
freedom and independence under Kosciuszko. 
True, neither Ireland nor Poland are recognized 
as national units, and lack all the externals of 
a government, but if a nation is — as a writer in 



262 Poland in the World of Democracy. 

the North American Eeview (vol. CXV, p. 390) 
puts it, " a race of men, small or great, whom 
community of traditions and feeling binds to- 
gether into a firm and indestructible unity and 
whose love of the same future," then Ireland and 
Poland are two great nations in the world. 

Their glorious histories are ever present to 
their minds; no misfortune will break down and 
dishearten them. They are full of bright antici- 
pations. They think of the resurrection of their 
countries. Ireland today would be recreant to 
her past if she did not feel for Poland, so often 
called the Ireland of the East. Irishmen would 
not be the chivalrous and brave race were they 
not to welcome a free and independent Poland, 
as Poles would not be the lovers of freedom were 
they not to rejoice when Ireland has been de- 
clared free. 



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